Having clothes made is ordinary in Accra, not a luxury. You buy the cloth, you take it to a tailor or a seamstress, and a week or two later you have something that fits. It is how most Ghanaians get most of their good clothes, and for anything formal it is far cheaper than buying ready-made.
Where to buy cloth
Makola and Accra Central are the centre of the trade: whole streets of cloth sellers, every pattern in stock, and prices that reward asking twice.
Neighbourhood markets all have cloth sellers, with less choice and less haggling.
Brand shops - the well-known Ghanaian wax print houses - sell their own prints at fixed prices, with the design and quality guaranteed. Dearer than the market, and the safe way to buy something you want to last.
Kantamanto and the second-hand trade is where to look for finished clothes rather than cloth.
— Where to buy second-hand clothes
How cloth is sold
By the yard, and usually in a piece of six or twelve yards. A “half piece” is six. Most outfits take a set number of yards, and your tailor will tell you how many before you buy - ask first, because coming back for a second cut of the same print is how you discover the batch has gone.
Buy the whole piece you need in one go. Prints run out, batches differ slightly in colour, and a sleeve cut from a later batch shows.
Real wax, and everything else
The market sells several things that look similar and cost very differently:
- Real wax print is printed on both sides, with the pattern as strong on the back as the front, and the colour goes right through the cloth.
- Fancy print, or imitation, is printed on one side only. The back is pale. It is cheaper, it is perfectly usable, and it should not be sold to you at wax prices.
- Lace, brocade and voile are their own trade, priced by weight and quality, and are what most formal and funeral outfits are made from.
- Kente is woven, not printed, and is a different purchase again - by the strip or the cloth, hand-woven or machine-made, at wildly different prices.
Check the selvedge. Real wax print usually carries the maker’s name along the edge, and a copy either lacks it or misspells it.
Rub a damp finger on a corner of anything suspiciously cheap. Colour that comes away will come away in the wash too.
Working with a tailor
The cloth is the easy part. The tailor is the decision.
- Go to someone whose work you have seen on a person, not in a photograph. Everyone in Accra can recommend a tailor.
- Take a picture of what you want, and be specific about the parts you care about: sleeve length, neckline, how fitted.
- Take a garment that already fits as a reference. It beats measurements.
- Agree the price, the number of yards and the date before you leave the cloth, and get the date in a message rather than a memory.
- Expect to go back for a fitting, and expect the first date to move - especially in December, when every tailor in the country is overwhelmed, and before a big funeral or wedding.
- Pay a deposit, not the whole price.
— Funerals and social obligations — Festivals in Ghana
What it is worth knowing about colour
Cloth in Ghana carries meaning. Black, dark red and brown are worn to funerals; white and bright colours for thanksgiving, births and celebrations. A funeral in particular has an expected palette, and turning up in the wrong one is noticed.
If you are buying for a specific occasion, say what the occasion is when you buy the cloth. The seller will steer you right.
— Learning Twi and Ga — Accra’s markets — Where to shop in Accra