June 2023

Lexie Moreland/WWD A mannequin stands with head tilted, a knee jutting from the deep bias chiffon and woven fabric hemline of Papa Oppong’s Takari T, a T-shirt worn as a dress from the Ghanaian-born designer’s celebrated 2021 Yopoo collection, which evokes a Ghanaian woman’s life from birth to marriage to death. A “Ghana Must Go” bag — the ever-present blue, white and red reusable bags which have come to symbolize the forced migration of tens of millions of Ghanaians from Nigeria — sits on the ground next to the mannequin. It’s considered one of two looks from Oppong included within the Brooklyn Museum’s iteration of “Africa Fashion,” the blockbuster exhibition that opened last summer at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and which...