The Story Behind Every Afropop Socks Design
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Stocked at Tate Modern · V&A · Selfridges (UK) and Smithsonian NMAAHC · MoMA (USA)
People ask me all the time how I choose the designs. The honest answer is that I don't choose them. They choose me. Every design in the Afropop Socks collection comes from a cultural tradition that I grew up with, that I've studied, that I care about deeply.
The Kente cloth collection is the one closest to my heart. My family is Ghanaian, and Kente cloth was at every important moment of my childhood. Weddings. Naming ceremonies. Funerals. The gold and green and red of Kente cloth is woven into my earliest memories. When I designed the Kente collection, I worked with the actual colour meanings. Gold for royalty. Green for growth. Red for sacrifice. Black for the ancestors. Every colour is intentional.
The Adinkra symbol collection came from my dad. He used to point out Adinkra symbols everywhere and tell me what they meant. Sankofa for learning from the past. Gye Nyame for the omnipotence of God. Dwennimmen for strength with humility. I wanted to put those symbols on something people would wear every day, so the wisdom would travel with them.
The Maasai warrior collection came from a trip I took to Kenya. I saw Maasai warriors in their red shukas and I was struck by the confidence of it. The boldness. The way the geometric patterns and the colours worked together. I spent time learning what those colours meant before I designed anything. Red for courage. Blue for the sky. Green for land and health.
The Pan-African collection is about Marcus Garvey and the flag he created in 1920. Red, black, and green. The blood, the people, the land. Those colours have been flying for over a hundred years and they still mean something.
Every design has a story. And every pair comes with a card that tells it.
About the Author
Isaac Prempeh is the founder of Afropop Socks, a British-Ghanaian designer and entrepreneur based in London. He founded Afropop Socks in 2019 to celebrate authentic African cultural heritage through bold wearable design. Afropop Socks is now stocked at the Smithsonian NMAAHC, Tate Modern, V&A Museum, Natural History Museum, Barbican Centre, Selfridges, and MoMA New York.