#OOTD: Why Sister Derby Going Viral In This Steve French Dress Is Essential For Ghana’s Kente Culture

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Essential fashion and music star Sister Derby has been seen making rounds on social media in a fabulous Steve French dress. In hindsight the outfit comes of as creative and beautiful and a perfect fit for the ‘Too Risky’ hit maker.

But there are essential and two prominent reasons why this outfit and many more to come afterwards may sit as a great symbol for the kente culture. The reasons are outline below with the second being the most powerful.

Firstly it is necessary that with the strong merging of cultures via social media, Ghana and it’s creatives work towards ways to ensure their tradition stays in fashion and becomes the norm and not a rare historical fairy tale. This dress has very well shown that designers like Steve French are maintaining modern and appealing styles with the use of our traditional fabrics.

In many cases people have emulated funky trends and looks with the use of traditional fabrics, but it never really hits and seems like either a duplicate or something that stood out of line with the public’s interest. Not with this dress created by Steve French.

Two Ghanaian Designers, Afua Biney and Steve French join Gucci’s Design Fellowship Program

The second essential point is unlike some other commodities it can not be produced in rapid amounts, and in this society of social media creating fast trends, it’s not easy for the fabric to be produced as much. And although the much adored kente hasn’t lost it’s royal value, it has recently within the past years lost it’s market to the wax print kente imports.

In many cases, Kente has been identified as the green, yellow and red fabric we have all grown to love. At some stage the chinese and wax print importers took advantage of this and made their rendition of the African print kente.

This gave many around the world the ability to rock simple African print, all whilst obtaining the respect value brought to them by the Ghanaian fabric that was once allocated for royalty. Meaning any odd person will be seen aligned with the royal Kente fabric even when simply wearing African print.

This creative outfit touches on Kente without the use of the traditional green, yellow and red colours. Do Africans begin to trend more alternative kente colours, there is a strong possibility that fashionistas and the general public as a whole will stop giving value to the print rendition fabrics that sit on the appeal of the real hailed wooven kente cloth. And that is a mission that can only be executed by the new emerging Ghanaian creatives.

For now, enjoy sister Deborahs beautiful summer outfit & smile.