Eloquent and poised, Dubie Toa-Kwapong ’16 is a woman with a philosophy of radical self-acceptance, comfort and ease in fashion and stylistic expression through a blended cultural heritage. Toa-Kwapong made her family’s influence on her style abundantly clear throughout the interview, especially stressing the inspiration she has drawn from her mother, father and grandmother. To understand her unique and complex approach to style, it’s crucial to hear Toa-Kwapong describe her cultural identity in her own words: “[I was] born and raised in Norway, primarily, [and I] spent a few years living in Ghana with my grandmother when I was younger. My mom is a Ghanaian women, but she was raised primarily in England, [and my] dad is Ghana born and bred. I think I mix a little bit of all those things [in my style], depending on how I’m feeling.”

Toa-Kwapong’s culturally diverse background is both synergistic and at odds within the context of her style. She has created a unique dynamic for her self-expression. Throw in the hip-hop aesthetic and Minnesota winters, and you have the ultimate melting pot of stylistic inspiration. While the photographs help to convey Toa-Kwapong’s confidence and her variety of stylistic influences, I will attempt to do justice to Toa-Kwapong’s brilliant musings and advice about personal style in the following paragraphs.

When asked about the origins of her interest in fashion, Toa-Kwapong immediately points to her Ghanaian grandmother. “I have a grandma who’s really into clothes. She had a wardrobe full of high-heeled shoes and a lot of makeup.” Additionally, Toa-Kwapong credits her grandmother with teaching her that “you could be a woman who’s smart and eloquent and cares about a lot of different things, and that doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive of expressing yourself through style.” Her grandmother’s love of “bright patterns and mixed colors and textures” also fit into what Toa-Kwapong calls a “West-African aesthetic,” referring to the colors, textures and tight-fitting tendency of the clothing popular in West Africa. However, Toa-Kwapong relates more to her mother’s mantra that “comfort should be first. You can look good and feel good, and they don’t have to be at the expense of each other.” Therefore, growing up in Scandinavia was beneficial to Toa-Kwapong because of the “abundance of shape and textures” in the fashion in Norway.

Her interest in Scandinavian fashion influences her fashion inspirations on Macalester’s campus. Toa-Kwapong’s friend, Hanna Mengistu ’16, “has a very simple style that reminds me of Norway. It’s very minimal. She has a lot of grays and navys. She always looks put together, but very effortless. And how she carries herself…it doesn’t seem like it’s wearing her. She can be herself through her clothes. So I really love that.” Her praise of Mengistu’s ability to be herself through her clothes fits into much of Toa-Kwapong’s stylistic evolution. She talks about going through “a phase in high school where I held back a lot. My mom was always one of the people pushing me to express myself. Don’t let days pass by where you aren’t fully being yourself.”

Toa-Kwapong went on, “There are so many restrictions in the world, but your body is the one thing you have that you can do whatever you want with, and you can change that as much as you want. So knowing that I have the power to change my aesthetic at any time I think is really cool.” This mentality also relates to her identity as a woman of African descent. Toa-Kwapong referenced how her racial identity, hair style and self-expression intersect when she declared, “I am clearly a black African woman, and I think my aesthetic definitely shifts a lot depending on my hair style. So right now I have braids, and that’s one kind of aesthetic, but when I have my natural hair out as an afro I feel like almost a different person.”

Toa-Kwapong further mused about how her changing hairstyles affects the ways in which people both interact with and react to her. These snap judgements and perceptions about a person based on their mode of dress or hairstyle are significant in the eyes of Toa-Kwapong, and she sees her time at Macalester as a platform for her evolution in confidence and letting go of the judgements of others.

Over the years she’s spent here, she has learned to “let loose a little more, think about other people’s opinions a little less and [focus] a little bit more about how this feels to [her].” This stems from her belief that “when you let people express themselves the way they want to, arguably the world is a better place. I think you have a lot of people who are really hemmed in, and take that out on others, and that’s why you have all of these comments. Maybe if more people were just doing what they wanted to, we wouldn’t have as much of that.” By these comments, Toa-Kwapong is referring to negative judgements about another person’s personal sense of style. To her, style is ideally a way “to be inspired by other people, and to be able to see something and acknowledge its beauty, and to have that not be an affront to you, even if it’s different. Just being able to appreciate things that you both can relate to and can’t relate to is powerful.” To sum it all up, Toa-Kwapong quoted Lisa Simpson of The Simpsons, “Be you how you be you.”

To add another layer to the wise musings of Toa-Kwapong, here are a few fun fashion facts: Her favorite article of clothing in a polka-dotted jumpsuit, Nina Simone is one of her style icons and Monki is her favorite brand. She also calls herself a “sneakerhead*,” and she once wore dark purple lipstick to school every day, even though her male friends told her it was a “man repeller.” Toa-Kwapong is quick to add, “‘Man repeller’ is definitely an aesthetic that I relate to a lot, like man-repelling shoes, anything that upsets men, like when they think that you’re dressing for them, makes me really happy!”

To Toa-Kwapong, personal style is about constantly striving to express your full, unapologetic, purple-lipstick-wearing, comfort-craving and sneaker-loving self.

*If you’re wondering what a “sneakerhead” is, Urban Dictionary defines the term as “a person with background knowledge of certain sneakers.”