Zakaria Abdul Hakim Cisse || Sanatu Zambang
In recent years, talks on fashion has been an issue in the Ghanaian media sphere. Drawing inspiration from big-time fashion hubs such as France, many Ghanaian fashion designers, have been exploring the diversity in the industry and how to improve fashion commercialization.
Speaking with one of the Ghanaian creative artistes based Accra, Ghana, Theresa Ankomah narrated how her fashion journey began.
According to her, even though she has always been passionate about fashion, she never took it as a course of study in her education journey. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology graduate said she always loved earrings. This made her create earrings out of objects, which drew the attention of those around her.
This childhood passion is what landed her into her fashion business as the founder of Trezy collections. As young as the fashion business is, Trezy has always expressed her gratitude of how her customer-base has shot up.
Theresa believes there is now market for fashion designers in Ghana and designers should take the chance. She differentiated cloth makers from fashion designers and said that designers are able to draft their own designs and materialize it.
For her, she had to stay focused and keep believing in her craft at all times. This she said, has earned her great platforms and she would never dream of letting go. This is why Theresa has always considered herself as a learner.
Touching on feminism and gender, she said that despite the gender, we should be able to express ourselves as something and still be accepted by society.
“In the fashion industry, people choose a way of life due to the nature of their work and so, people should not tag them in a way that will demoralize them.” She stated.
Theresa noted that while politics have a play in one way or the other in the works of artistes, some artistes are able to sway a little bit from mainstream politics into aesthetics, nature and other thought-provoking arts. She however cited some artistes who are on the other hand, critiquing political discourse, happenings, policies, etc. with their arts.
The founder of Trezy collections is hoping to grow beyond borders while impacting on society.
Theresa was speaking to Sanatu Zambang at the recent opening of the SCCA and Red Clay Studios Akutia Art Exhibition. It was her fourth time in Tamale. Theresa came purposely to see the opening of the Art Exhibition and was thrilled by the amazing works that were displayed.
“Ibrahim’s efforts give me hope for been able to open-up such a big space for art. One thing I’m also happy about is the fact that despite the many people who took part to make the exhibition successful, Ibrahim has been able to recognize the efforts of everyone, no matter how meagre their contribution.” Theresa said.
One of the works in the exhibition that actually caught her eyes is the one that has been featured in the event flier ( Akokɔ baa tan nan tia ba, enkum ba). She highlighted how profound it is for Dr. Ossei Agyemang to implicitly capture the nurturing ability of the mother and how caring they are to their children in a vivid piece of painting. As a woman, this work gave her a second thought of how wonderful women are.