Ankara styles are trending, no doubt.
Ankara is somewhat omnipresent and common materials for clothing in West Africa.
They gained in roads to West Africa through Dutch merchants as far back as the 19th century.
These merchants took inspiration from native Indonesian designs.
Ankara is industrially produced colorful cotton cloths with batik-inspired printing.
And for Ankara materials you can hardly differentiate the back from the front of the fabric.
The colour intensity is similar at both ends.
The Ankara fabric can be sorted into categories of quality due to the processes of manufacturing.
There are the very expensive Ankara to the easily affordable type.
The varying price ranges is perhaps a key factor that now makes Ankara a fabric of choice.
Normally, the fabrics are sold in lengths of 12 yards (11 m) as “full piece” or 6 yards (5.5 m) as “half piece”.
The colours comply with local preferences of the customers.
Clothing for celebrations is made from this fabric.
The fabric is a type of nonverbal communication among African women, and thereby carry their messages out into the world.
Ankara styles are readily at the fingertips.
This, perhaps informs the choice of Ankara used for Asoebi.
Some of the fabrics are named after personalities, cities, buildings, sayings, or occasions.
In West Africa Ankara has an estimated annual sales volume of 2.1 billion yards, with an average production cost of $2.6 billion and retail value of $4 billion.
Ghana, where the termJust Ankara originates from, has an annual consumption of textiles of about 130 million yards (120 million metres).
The Vlisco Group, owner of the Vlisco, Uniwax, Woodin, and GTP brands, produced 58.8 million yards (53.8 million meters) of fabric in 2011.
Net sales were €225 million, or $291.65 million.
In 2014, Vlisco’s 70 million yards of fabric (about 64 million meters) were produced in the Netherlands, yielding a turnover of €300 million.
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