Fashion Entrepreneurs’ Experiences of Hope in a Precarious Ghanaian Creative Industry

This paper explored creative entrepreneurs’ experiences of hope in navigating precarious working conditions in the Ghanaian fashion industry. The fashion and entrepreneurship scholarship acknowledges that several fashion entrepreneurs are ‘hustling’ to build and sustain their labels and brands in the face of difficulties. However, we discovered that rather than giving up, entrepreneurs must craft ways and develop strategies to make it in dire situations. Ghanaian fashion owners focus on and theorize the most prevalent practices of navigating, and managing compounded precarity: that of hope. Through a comparative and intersectional approach, we investigate the practices and narratives crafted by fashion entrepreneurs within challenging working conditions. This fact has implications for how we think about hope and entrepreneurship in the fashion industry in Ghana. By so doing, this study contributes to the ongoing conceptual debates regarding the nature of creative work in the fashion industry.