There’s a certain kind of fashion that asks you to look. And then there’s the kind that asks you to remember.
EBONY 2025 Power 100 Honoree Influential Creator Sam Boakye of Kwasi Paul dropped his Spring 2026, Keepsakes, which falls firmly in the latter.
Released as the first delivery of the season, the collection doesn’t scream for attention. It lingers. It pulls from something deeper. Something inherited. Something felt before it’s fully understood. Because for Kwasi Paul, this isn’t just about clothes. It’s about the in-between. The diasporic tension of existing between African heritage and Western reality and choosing to build something entirely your own in that space.
And that tension shows up everywhere.
In the tailoring, yes but also in the emotion.
Keepsakes is built on memory. Childhood, Ghanaian day names and folklore and the quiet symbolism of objects that outlive us. Think family photographs tucked into drawers. Jewelry boxes passed down. Cowrie shells that once signaled wealth, protection and spiritual grounding.
Now imagine all of that cut into a blazer.
The standout Mensah Blazer, handwoven in Ghana from custom fugu cotton, carries that weight literally and culturally. Cowrie shells are placed with restraint not decoration. Subtle reminders of lineage stitched into something you could wear to a meeting a dinner or your next reinvention.
That’s the trick Kwasi Paul is pulling off here. Nothing feels like costume. Everything feels lived in.
Even the softer pieces like the Ntoma Wrap Top reinterpret traditional wrapped garments through drape and movement instead of direct imitation. It’s cultural reference without the need for explanation. You either feel it or you don’t.
And then there’s the denim.
The Adinkra Field set takes something as universal as a field shirt and turns it into a quiet archive. Brass buttons etched with Adinkra symbols each one carrying ancestral meaning dot the surface like punctuation marks in a story that didn’t start with us.
It’s not loud. It’s intentional.
The same can be said for the Bolga trenches where traditional basket weaving techniques are translated into sculptural pleats that move as you move. One version arrives adorned with cowrie shells the other stripped back letting structure speak for itself. Heritage but make it architectural.
Even the more playful pieces like the World of KP printed set don’t drift too far from the core message. The prints pull from diasporic narratives layering figures, icons and memory into wearable storytelling. It’s giving “I know where I come from” without having to say a word.
But the real thesis of Keepsakes might live in the details you almost miss.
Buttons engraved with portraits of the designer’s mother and grandfather. A blazer that feels less like a garment and more like an heirloom in rotation. Pieces designed not just to be worn but to be passed down.
Because that’s the thing about this collection.
It understands something a lot of fashion right now doesn’t.
We’re not just getting dressed for the moment anymore. We’re dressing for memory. For lineage. For the version of ourselves that future generations will try to piece together through what we left behind.
Kwasi Paul isn’t just designing clothes.
He’s designing evidence that we were here.