Yesterday, along with another 30 or so NAWA members I was lucky enough to get a place on a visit to the nearby GTP factory. GTP is the Ghanaian part of Vlisco, the Dutch wax print fabric that has dominated West Africa at least for the past 150 years. Vlisco is still made in Holland, but the fashion forward Woodin brand is produced here in Ghana, along with Ghanaian favourite GTP
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| Raw cotton fabric know as grey cloth |
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| goes through many processes |
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| until it is ready to 'receive' the dyes |
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| machines |
Cloth which is still very raw goes through a (no photos company secret) series of machines and chemicals until it is clean, smooth and ready for dyeing
There are various lines at the factory, screen prints with multiple colours, wax prints which are machine printed, and some which are hand printed
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| waxed and dyed |
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| hand printed |
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| Penney has a try |
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| back view of the hand block area |
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| block library |
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| cloth being steam set - the two cloths follow the same route but remain separated |
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| packaging department |
It was a hot and sweaty day for us, full of noises, smells and steamy machines, not quite a dark satanic mill, but still a hard place to work.
Vlisco and its brands are under pressure though - Chinese knock offs of the latest designs can be found in the markets about 10 weeks after launch (and a cargo ship from China takes...about 9!) and they are sold at only slightly discounted prices so you feel you are buying a bargain - there are to the naked untrained eye very few difference between original and counterfeit until the fabric is washed when the quality differences can be seen. Also, African values are changing. Sets of Vlisco were often part of a bride price in the past, and women might purchase and keep hold of sets of cloth as a kind of banking scheme - now there are many other items which have value and are more desirable.
I will be going back to the local fabric market soon...and with different eyes
