For Pearl Amoah, participating in the Miss Universe-Ghana beauty pageant about eight years ago was not to show off her beauty. She was indeed looking for an opportunity to create wings that could help her fly to the top of her chosen career ? modelling and fashion designing.

Today Pearl has succeeded in making a name for herself and country as an international model. After exhibiting other people?s clothes around the world for almost a decade, the top flight model is ready with her own.

Her collection, simply known as ?Pearl,? has been launched in Accra and is expected to be marketed in Africa, Europe, North America and the rest of the world. After following fashion for the past fifteen years, Pearl says she has derived an understanding of previous fashion periods and concepts from various cultures.

And indeed just looking at the sketches of some of her designs even before I saw the actual clothing, revealed that Pearl understands the fashion (clothing) language. She told The Mirror that she wouldoperate in the U.S. on mass production and custom order bases, offering apparel designed to suit the needs of the wearer. According to her, the products will be "comfortable, appropriate, and dignifying, but simultaneously express a wearer?s sense of individuality".

After winning the Miss Universe-Ghana crown in 1996, Pearl worked as an international model in the United States, Paris, South Africa, London and Ghana. She was awarded the Ebony Africa Model of the Year Award in 1999.She also organises and produces the annual ?Conde Accra? Fashion Week in Ghana, bringing together top designers from Africa.

Pearl Amoah has Bachelor of Arts degree in Hospitality Management from West-bourn University in London, and is pursuing a degree in Architecture & Interior Design from the New School University affiliated with Parsons School of Design in New York.

In 1999 she established Fashion House, a highly successful fashion boutique in Accra, where she sells the latest fashion designs gathered from her world experiences. In a chat with this reporter, the twenty-something-year-old beauty gave a good account of herself as fashion designer as she attempted to explain her idea of current fashion.

This is what she had to say: ?The concept of fashion, or how we drape our bodies, has affected every person to date in one form or another. The current fashion culture traces back to the 1700s where other disciplines such as architecture, interiors, colour theory, and art were established in a cyclical manner.

?Fashion still operates by borrowing from other cultures, repeating from the past, or creating outright inventions, then merging all into new forms as I am doing now,? she added. Pearl?s goal is to target the everyday businessman/woman, mothers as well as students looking for comfort in the office, restaurant and nightclubs without feeling out of place.

Pearl believes texture and colour play important roles in fashion, therefore seasonal colours are her priority. Again, for her, the right texture will make a person feel comfortable.