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Fashion Special Africa’s Top 10 Male Fashion designers


Ozwald Boateng


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Boateng’s interest in clothes began at the tender age of 16 while he was a computer student at the London Technical College, and his inspiration


was the girl he was then dating! “She was incredibly artistic,” Boateng has


said about her. “She could paint, sculpt, design clothes, everything.” One day she asked him to help out on a fashion show she was participating in. Despite


his protestation that he could not sew clothes, the girlfriend convinced him to try it out. “She showed me how and for some reason it was easy.” Thereafter Boateng began making clothes for himself and was


pleasantly surprised by the positive reaction his self-tailored gear elicited from his peers. He decided to switch his computer course to fashion design. It wasn’t long before Boateng was working and selling his


designs from a studio in London’s East End and at just 18 years of age, his clothes were on sale in London’s trendy King’s Road in Chelsea. In 1993 he opened a store in one of London’s trendiest streets, Portobello Road. Today Boateng is affectionately described as “one of the British fashion industry’s larger than life characters”. If his range of designs, both ready-to-wear and the much-sought-after custom-made suits are anything to go by, it is a description that is most apt.


A born trailblazer, Ozwald Boateng is truly our proud African emblem to be found in the hallowed halls of such names as Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York, and London’s high-end and famous Savile Row, where he opened his flagship store on Vigo Street in 1995. Other accolades include his 2003 appointment as the first creative director at Givenchy Homme. The Ozwald Boateng name is also the undisputed lead


suits he is most renowned for. Boateng is the son of a Ghanaian teacher, Kweshi, and his


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wife Mary, who was a seamstress. It is to her that he attributes his love of colour in his designs, especially purple as it reminds him of the mohair suit she made for him at the age of five, and which became his favourite childhood outfit. We New African women also love the fact that the “suave one” keeps true to his roots and is always proud to fly his Ghanaian flag wherever he goes. He wants to make a difference in Africa’s developmental efforts, and as such, in 2007, he founded Made in Africa, an organisation which he runs with two business partners to promote wealth and self-sufficiency as well as help develop profitable commercial businesses that could expose African business opportunities to international investment.


hen you think of Ozwald Boateng, the words flamboyant, chic and suave come to mind. He is Dubbed as “the peacock of Savile Row” due to the exuberant fabric and colours he uses in his ready-to-wear collections and the bespoke


attraction for celebrity clientele. The list of celebrity devotees of our “African Alexander McQueen” goes on and on: Mick Jagger, Seal, Herbie Hancock, Usher, Will Smith, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Tinie Tempah, George Michael, Laurence Fishburne, Pierce Brosnan, Richard Branson, Wesley Snipes, Lennox Lewis, Chris Tucker, Eddie Murphy, Lenny Kravitz, Rev Jesse Jackson, Idris Elba and Michael Essien to name but a few! A man of great presence, standing six-foot, four inches


tall, Boateng is his own walking advertisement for his clothes – nobody looks better in an impeccably tailored single-breasted slim-line, fuchsia pink-lined suit than Boateng himself. Ladies, here is more to why we should love our men in suits and wearing the O. Boateng trousers!


“Ladies, here is more to why we should love our men in suits and wearing the O. Boateng trousers!”


Janelle Oswald


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