The Atelier
Made in Accra.
Origin
A house that began at a kitchen table.
Abla Gale started in a small flat in Osu with two sewing machines, a length of cream linen, and a notebook full of drawings that had been waiting a long time to be made. We named the house after our mother and her mother — two women who taught us that a well-made garment is a kind of quiet luxury, and that the quiet is what makes it luxurious. We still cut on the same wooden table. We have simply built a room around it.
The Makers
Every piece is touched, at least, by eleven hands.
Our team is small on purpose. There are cutters, machinists, finishers, pressers, and a woman named Auntie Adzoa who oversees everything and has an opinion about all of it. Nobody in the atelier makes a garment alone. A shirt passes through the hands of a cutter, a shoulder specialist, a collar setter, a buttonhole finisher, a presser, and finally Adzoa herself, who inspects it against the light before it is allowed to leave.
The Materials
We choose cloth the way we choose company.
We work with Belgian linen, Italian wools, Egyptian cotton, and — when we can find it in the right weight — hand-loomed cotton from weavers in Bonwire and Kpetoe. We buy in small quantities. We do not carry a fabric we would not wear ourselves. If a mill cannot tell us where their fibre comes from, we do not work with them.
The Practice
Slow is not a marketing word for us.
We release two collections a year. We remake pieces that have worked and quietly retire the ones that have not. We do not chase trends and we do not run sales. What we save on urgency, we spend on cloth, on finishing, on the people who make the work. This is not a philosophy. It is simply how the house is organised.
Made in Accra. Meant to be worn for a long time.