Our approach
Made here,worn anywhere
Belberry is a Ghanaian house. We make clothing for women, men and children, and we work with craft towns across the country for the things that go with it — beads, baskets, carving, clay.
The range is deliberately not only traditional dress and not only Western tailoring. It is Ghanaian cloth cut into shapes people actually wear, on an ordinary Tuesday as much as at a wedding.
01Cloth
Three cloths, three behaviours
Wax print is printed, not woven — the pattern sits on the surface, the cloth is stable, and it takes a gathered or pleated shape well. It also fades in direct sun, which is why every care label here says to dry in shade.
Kente is woven, in strips, and joined afterwards. It is stiff, heavy and expensive, and it does not drape. So we use it where it is seen and where its weight helps — a wrap top, a sash, a headwrap — rather than making an entire gown from it and charging accordingly.
Brocade and damask carry their pattern in the weave rather than on top of it, so they do not fade. They are what most of the menswear is cut from, because an agbada needs a cloth with body.
02The makers
Six places, named
Craft in Ghana is geographic. A technique belongs to a town, and saying which town is the difference between a claim and a fact.
Kente weaving
Bonwire, Ashanti Region
Woven in narrow strips on a treadle loom and joined by hand afterwards. A single cloth can take a weaver several days, which is why the kente collection stays small.
Adinkra stamping
Ntonso, Ashanti Region
Symbols carved into calabash and pressed into cloth with ink boiled down from badie tree bark. Each impression is made by hand, so no two panels match.
Recycled glass beads
Odumase Krobo, Eastern Region
Bottle glass is ground to powder, layered into clay moulds with a cassava-stalk core and fired. Each bead is then painted individually.
Straw weaving
Bolgatanga, Upper East Region
Elephant grass is split, dyed and woven damp, then dried into shape. That is what lets a basket hold its form with no frame inside it.
Wood carving
Aburi, Eastern Region
Stools carved from a single block — seat, column and base in one piece, nothing joined and nothing glued.
Pottery
Vume and Sirigu
Coil-built and pit fired at Vume in the Volta Region; painted in the geometric house style at Sirigu in the Upper East.
03Bespoke
Or bring us your cloth
A lot of people in Ghana already own the cloth before they own the garment — bought at a market, given at a funeral, brought back by family. We will cut to it.
Send measurements or come to the studio by appointment. Most pieces in the range can be made to measure, and the product page says so where it applies.
Something wrong with a piece, or a question about a commission? Write to mybelberry@gmail.com. A person reads every message.
Get in touch