ABOVE THE FOLD
Margaret Sakikai Ofori-Atta has spent four decades moving between worlds with uncommon ease: from the ateliers of London's Knightsbridge to the infrastructure corridors of West Africa; from the showrooms of Paris and Tokyo to the boardrooms where nations decide their futures.
She did not choose one world or the other. She built bridges between all of them.
The Early Years
Margaret's formation as a designer was forged in London, where she trained and developed her eye for construction, texture, and the architecture of clothing. She understood early that fashion was not decoration. It was identity made visible — a language that, in the right hands, could speak across cultures, classes, and continents.
Her instinct proved correct. In the years that followed, she would go on to create bespoke pieces for Diana, Princess of Wales, through the celebrated house of Turnbull & Asser. She designed for Winnie Mandela. She served an exacting clientele across England's Jewish community, where attention to detail and discretion were non-negotiable. Each commission deepened her understanding that the most meaningful work is made for someone specific — that true craft is always personal.
A Ghanaian Original
Margaret carried her training home with conviction. Her contributions to Ghanaian fashion and creative culture were pioneering in ways that the industry has not fully accounted for — and that she herself has never sought to dramatise.
She was the first Ghanaian designer to have her work introduced through USAID/AMEX, opening a door that had not previously existed for African designers in that context. She staged the first Ghanaian fashion show in Rosebank, South Africa, shortly after the end of apartheid — a moment of cultural arrival as much as commercial debut. She was the first Ghanaian judge for Face of Africa, where she selected Oluchi, who went on to become the face that defined a generation of African modelling. She produced and launched the first international-standard television show in Ghana with GBC in 1989, introducing a new quality of storytelling to Ghanaian screens.
These were not gestures. They were foundations.
The finest things are not made quickly. They are made with intention, with memory, and with love for what endures
LIFES WORK
Designer
MagDanielli
Margaret's collections have been presented at Prêt-à-Porter exhibitions with the EEC, at IGedo in Germany, at the Javits Center in New York, and in Brussels. She collaborated with Japan's design community in partnership with Ghana's Ministry of Tourism. She worked with Boyd's Company Japan and Cocoon Knightsbridge. Her designs were featured in Pride Magazine, Avant Garde, and CNN Global Report South Africa.
The International Quality Award, presented in France in 1992, recognised what those who worked with her already knew: that Margaret Ofori-Atta's commitment to excellence in craft and production was absolute.
Selected Projects
Infrastructure, Trade, and the World Behind the Work
Design was not her only language. Alongside her creative work, Margaret built a formidable commercial presence in infrastructure development, project financing, and international trade — specialising in roads, highways, and bridge construction, and financing large-scale government-backed projects across the African continent.
She served as a strategic advisor at the highest levels of international business, working with multi-jurisdictional banking and project consortia, facilitating bilateral trade relationships between governments, and structuring syndicated financing for infrastructure, energy, and development projects. Her collaborations included engagements with the presidencies of Ghana and South Africa, Ghana Airports, and leading international engineering and infrastructure firms.
This breadth was never incidental. Margaret has always understood that building a nation — like building a garment — requires patience, precision, and the ability to hold many things together at once.
The Late Danny Nana Kwame Ofori-Atta
[Danielli Mabey, Egle, Databank]
Danielli Mabey
Danny and Margaret Ofori-Atta did not just inherit a country. They built one. Together they co-founded Danielli Mabey — 400 bridge projects across Ghana. The land to start it came from Margaret's father. The vision, the labour, the risk — that was both of them.
Danny founded Databank, one of Ghana's most enduring financial institutions. He founded the Eagle Party — Every Ghanaian Living Everywhere — a political vision as ambitious as anything he built in steel and concrete.
Margaret built beside him and beyond him — in design, in enterprise, in the thousands of designers she trained at no cost and the doors she opened for Ghanaian creativity on the world stage.
Two people. Decades of work. A country that is measurably different because they were in it.
"we were building something that would outlast us."
The work continues. The work continues. Their children — Danielli, Tiffany, and Daniel Ofori-Atta — carry that inheritance forward, each through their complimentary domains. The thread between generations is visible, intentional, and unbroken.
Selected Projects
For years, Lady Margaret's gifts were given most fully to her family, to those she trained, and to the projects that shaped others. She trained thousands of designers at no cost. She mentored. She built. She gave generously and without condition.
Now, she returns — not to resume what was, but to create what is next. The same hands. A deeper perspective. Work rooted in memory, shaped by experience, and made for those who understand that the finest things are never rushed.
Lady Margaret is not beginning. She is continuing.
Design philosophy
NextGen Digital
Lady Margaret does not design for seasons. She designs for lives.
Her approach to craft is grounded in a belief that clothing carries meaning beyond the moment of wearing — that a well-made garment is a record of intention, a keeper of memory, and a form of connection between the maker and the wearer that transcends time and trend.
Heritage as Foundation
Every piece begins with heritage — not as nostalgia, but as material. The textures, techniques, and visual languages of West Africa are not references in Lady Margaret's work. They are the grammar. She draws on the richness of Ghanaian craft traditions — the patience of kente, the precision of hand embroidery, the dignity encoded in cloth — and brings them into conversation with the construction discipline of European couture.
The result is garments that belong to neither tradition entirely, and feel entirely natural to both.
"I was trained in London, but everything I understand about permanence, I learned from home."
The Architecture of Clothing
Lady Margaret approaches garment construction as an architect approaches a building: with structural discipline, attention to proportion, and a deep respect for how a form must live in the world. She is interested in silhouette — in how a garment holds its shape across time, across movement, across occasion. Her cuts are considered. Her fabrics are chosen for longevity as much as beauty. Her finishing is invisible in the best sense: present in the quality of what is felt, absent from what the eye is permitted to see.
Adornment with Purpose
Lady Margaret is not an ascetic. Her work has always embraced richness — in colour, in texture, in embellishment — but never for its own sake. Every choice serves a purpose. The gold that appears in a seam detail refers to something. The fabric that drapes in a particular way is doing work that simpler cloth cannot. She designs for women who understand the difference between decoration and meaning — and who insist on both.
Designed for the Woman Who Endures
Her most consistent client has always been the woman who does not need fashion to announce her. She needs clothing that is equal to her — that holds her with the same quiet confidence she moves through the world with. Margaret designs for women who have built something, survived something, or are in the process of both. She designs for presence.
A Philosophy in Practice
Lady Margaret does not produce collections as a machine produces goods. Each body of work is considered, limited, and made with the intention that it will be worn and valued over years — not discarded as the season changes. This is her commitment, and her invitation: to those who dress not for the moment, but for the life they are making.
Selected Projects
Four decades of work leave a particular kind of trail — not in warehouses or archives, but in the lives of those who wore the pieces, attended the shows, or sat in rooms where decisions were made. What follows is a curated account of that trail.
01
Bespoke Commissions, London
In the years of her London practice, Lady Margaret created bespoke pieces for a clientele that included Diana, Princess of Wales, through Turnbull & Asser — and for Winnie Mandela, whose public presence demanded clothing equal to the weight she carried. These commissions were made with complete discretion and absolute precision. They represent the foundation of her understanding of what it means to dress someone whose life is watched.
02
International Exhibitions
Three Prêt-à-Porter exhibitions with the EEC. IGedo, Germany. The Javits Center, New York. Brussels. Japan, in collaboration with Ghana's Ministry of Tourism. Lady Margaret brought Ghanaian design to stages where it had rarely appeared — and did so without apology, without compromise, and without losing the thread of where she came from.
03
South Africa, Post-Apartheid
To stage the first Ghanaian fashion show in Rosebank, South Africa, shortly after the fall of apartheid was not simply a commercial decision. It was a statement about what Africa could offer itself. The show marked Lady Margaret as a pioneer not only in design, but in the geography of possibility.
04
Collaborative Collections
Collaborations with Boyd's Company Japan and Cocoon Knightsbridge introduced Lady Margaret's work to audiences in two of the most discerning luxury retail environments in the world. Her designs held their own. They always have.
05
Media & Recognition
Features in Pride Magazine, Avant Garde, and CNN Global Report South Africa documented a career that the mainstream fashion press arrived at late. The International Quality Award, France, 1992. The Kwame Nkrumah University recognition in Fashion Design. These were not lifetime achievement honours — they were contemporaneous recognitions of work that was happening, right then, at the highest level.
06
— MHOSEENU, MAGDANIELLI, LE MAG GEAR
Her three fashion houses represent distinct chapters of a continuous creative vision: MHOSEENU, the founding vehicle of her design practice; MAGDANIELLI, bringing together the personal and the dynastic; and LE MAG GEAR, extending her work into new markets and forms. Each house was built with the same philosophy — that garments made well are garments that last.
LEGACY
Designer
MagDanielli
The Builders
Danny Ofori-Atta founded Danielli Mabey Engineering in 1983. In the decades that followed, the company built approximately 400 bridges across Ghana — Bailey and universal bridges, structures that outlast governments, that become part of the landscape so completely that people forget they were built by someone. He founded Databank — one of Ghana's most enduring financial institutions. That forgetting is the ultimate measure of permanence.
Margaret was beside that work. As a strategic partner, as the creative intelligence that shaped how the family presented itself, and as the person who understood — perhaps more fully than anyone — what it cost to build quietly and give generously in a world that rarely looks twice. Lady Margaret trained thousands of designers — at no cost, without condition, without expectation of credit. She opened doors for Ghanaian designers in markets that were previously closed. She shaped a generation of creative talent that has gone on to build careers and collections of their own.
None of this appears on a CV in the way that awards and exhibitions do. But it is, arguably, the more lasting contribution.
The work one gives away multiplies in ways the work one keeps never can.
Selected Projects
Legacy
affiliates
Framer
Presidency
MNET
Turnbull & Asser
USAID
PRIDE
GHANA AIRPORTS
AFT
Press & Recognition
International Quality Award — France, 1992
Kwame Nkrumah University Award in Fashion Design
© Lady Margaret Ofori-Atta. All rights reserved. Enquiries by private correspondence only.
