Igbo

• Dédé Rose Gamélé Creppy, who has died aged 89, was one of west Africa’s most influential wax cloth traders.
• She was the youngest, and the last living, “Nana Benz” – the legendary first generation of women cloth traders from Togo.
• Wax cloth was a European adaptation of a classic Indonesian batik hand printing technique which created designs using hot wax.
• The cloth was introduced to west Africa by Dutch and English textile manufacturers in the late 19th century.

From beads to cloth

• So, once she had acquired a small trading stock, she switched to cloth.
• As Maman Creppy accumulated more capital, she switched to English wax-prints from Arnold Brunnschweiler & Company (ABC) and later to Dutch wax cloth from Vlisco.
• Maman Creppy became a Nana Benz – one of the super-wholesalers of wax cloth.

Nana Benzes boom

• Nana Benzes therefore became a key part of the wax print trade and enabled the Dutch to penetrate other African markets.
• The Nana Benzes also had a monopoly over patterns – many of them unique.
• It was their effective monopoly over pattern rights that garnered the Nana Benzes unparalleled wealth.
• The Nana Benzes soon established distribution rights for these classic designs from colonial firms, such as Unilever’s United Africa Company (UAC).

The downfall

• The end of the Cold War and the democracy movement that liberalised political and economic spaces had serious consequences for the cloth trade.
• A devaluation of the CFA franc (by 50%) in 1994 turned an everyday consumer good, wax cloth, into a near luxury almost overnight.
• To add to the demise of the Nana Benzes, Chinese counterfeits entered the market in the early 2000s.

Maman Creppy’s legacy

• Like many of her older peers, Maman Creppy was married but lived independently with her children, whom she would later send to study in France; she owned a property in Lyon.
• The legacy of Dédé Rose Gamélé Creppy is preserved in her daughter’s work.