Kwame Nkrumah’s Suits: Sartorial Politics in Ghana at Independence

Abstract

This paper examines the wardrobe of the first prime minister and president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, to show how he created a set of “suits” or “looks” to mirror his overlapping traditional, modern, pan-African, Ghanaian, and Socialist political identities. It expands research on dandy culture to indicate how an African sensibility, mixed with inspiration from Asia, provided a wider repertoire of looks for postcolonial dressers beyond strictly Western or traditional African options. The paper begins with an overview of early discourse in the Gold Coast Colony (now Ghana) on the pros and cons of wearing cloth wrappers to show Ghanaian elites’ longstanding ambivalence toward wearing unsewn garments. While Kwame Nkrumah became famous for intricate kente cloths draped like togas, he also invested in custom-made British suits. In addition, Kwame Nkrumah wore fluttering batakari tops of hand-woven cloth to rouse the country at independence. By the early 1960s, he transitioned to wearing dark long-sleeved suit jackets in a style that came to be known in Ghana as “Zhou Enlai.” This research on Nkrumah’s fashion legacy shows how a business “suit” can be more than just a Western-style garment. It also complicates discourses surrounding cultural appropriation and intellectual property rights in textiles.