The casting director rewriting who gets to walk

Outside the venue for Accra's designer showcase last month, the crowd waiting to get in looked, deliberately, like the crowd that would walk inside: teenagers and grandmothers, a woman using a cane, models well over a size most agencies still call "plus." That mix on both sides of the runway is the doing of Naa Adjeley Quaye, a casting director who has spent four years arguing, show by show, that the industry's idea of who belongs on a catwalk is simply too narrow.

Quaye, 41, started as a model booker before moving into casting for Ghana's biggest shows, and says the shift began with a simple frustration: watching the same forty faces recycled season after season while thousands of capable models went uncast because they didn't fit an inherited template. She now keeps an open casting call before every major show she works, personally auditioning walkers who have never been near an agency, and has placed models in their sixties and models using mobility aids on runways that had never featured either.

"I've had designers tell me a certain body will 'distract' from the clothes," Quaye said. "My answer is always the same: if your clothes only work on one kind of body, that's a design problem, not a casting one." The decision that made her name came two years ago, when she cast a 58-year-old grandmother, walking for the first time, to close a show for a young Accra label — a booking that outdrew coverage of the collection itself.

She still gets pushback from brands worried about how a wider cast reads to retail buyers. Her line to them hasn't changed: "The buyers you're worried about are already dressing that customer. I'm just letting her see herself on the runway first."