AphroChic Magazine: Issue No. 1

“I’m not much of a talker,” says Nana Yaa Asare-Boadu, looking out the
window of a Brooklyn cafe at all the activity of a morning in New York City.
She says it quietly, the way she says most things, and though she’s here
specifically for a conversation, her first confession is more believable than
the next: “I don’t think that deeply about fashion.”
But if there’s one thing to learn
from Nana Yaa, it’s that not being much
of a talker should never be confused
with not having much to say. A career in
fashion that has spanned major brands
and nation-states has given her plenty
to say about fashion, design, and the
lopsided dialectic between honesty and
commerce in the life of a creative. That
doesn’t mean she wants to talk about it.
“People should just do it,” she says. “Stop
talking. Go places. See for themselves.
Listen, and then have their views.”
Nana Yaa is the definition of a global
citizen. Born in London of Ghanaian
ancestry and raised in Holland, her
talents have taken her to Paris and
Milan, with stays in Israel and Ghana.
All of that before arriving in
New York to assume a position with
fashion house Jonathan Simkhai that
now sees her time split between New
York and Los Angeles. Along the way
she’s acquired a fluency in French and
Dutch, as well as a working knowledge
of German and Twi.
With so many countries to her
credit, it’s not hard to imagine why
talking is not one of her more valued
pastimes. Perhaps a life lived between
languages has given her an appreciation
of all that words cannot do. Instead,
Nana Yaa favors non-verbal forms of
communication. Drawing, design, and
issue one