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COSTUME DESIGN
Xorlali Plange is a Tisch (NYU) trained costume designer who has worked in theatre, opera, dance, and film and has designed costumes for over 25 productions in New York and Ghana. His theatre works include Queen (African Grove Theatre, 2025), The House That Will Not Stand (Walker Theatre, 2024), Atobra (ETS Drama Studio, University of Ghana, 2021), and Chains & Shackles (Alliance Française, 2018/2019). Having designed dance productions, including Broken Walls (Tisch Dance, 2023), When Women Move (Alliance Française, 2022), and Aya (Ghana National Theatre, 2019), Plange’s opera designs have also been featured in Aging Gracefully, It’s Noon, and Windy with the American Opera Lab (Hudson Guild, 2024; Shubert, NYU, 2024).
Plange has collaborated with directors such as Rakesh Palisetty, Teresa Cruz, Sam Helfrich, Sena Atsugah, Kwesi Jones, Dr. Daniel Appiah-Adjei, and Nii Ayi Solomon. His film credits include The Wrath of Othell-yo (dir. Kwesi Jones) and Untouched (dir. Kemi Layeni). His works have been seen at the Ghana National Theatre, Alliance Française, and various academic and cultural spaces in Ghana and New York.
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FASHION DESIGN
A fashion designer and the founder of his eponymous brand, Xorlali Plange is recognized for his timeless and intricate approach to apparel design, which focuses on bodies, fit, detail, and functionality. The brand has provided custom bespoke services for over seven years, catering to more than 1,400 high-profile women across West Africa and the African diaspora. It offers everything from wedding dresses to everyday wear.
In 2023, Plange was awarded the Exceptional Fashion Designer Under 25 by the WIEA in Ghana and nominated for Fashion Designer of the Year by the Ghana Entertainment Awards USA 2024. With a presence in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, the USA, and the UK, his brand delivers high-quality garments that address the diverse needs of modern women while maintaining a commitment to craftsmanship, sustainability, self-expression, and design integrity. His global ready-to-wear collection is scheduled to launch in New York by 2026.
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TEACHING & WORKSHOPS
As an educator dedicated to mentorship and hands-on interdisciplinary learning, Plange has taught Introduction to Theatrical Production in the undergraduate drama department at New York University. Prior to this role, he trained 14 student apprentices through his Fashion Clinic in Ghana. He holds a BFA in Theatre Arts with a minor in Dance from the University of Ghana, where he graduated with First Class Honors and received the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Best Graduating Student in Arts. Additionally, he is an MFA candidate at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Plange's teaching interests are performance, dramaturgy, design, art-making, and material culture.
He also organizes workshops that span various disciplines. His most notable works, Utilizing Visual Storytelling to Teach Essential Life Skills in Basic Schools and Wax Prints: An Interdisciplinary Storytelling Method for the New Generation (Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh 2024), examine African textiles as effective teaching and learning tools. Plange is interested in developing curricula that weave African material culture into educational resources for children.
SCHOLARSHIP & DRAMATURGY
His research explores the relationship between Ghanaian women’s adornment practices and the documentation of their influence on economics, technology, and labour history. He examines textile symbolism, decorative arts, creative innovations, transnational trade, and the sociopolitical dimensions of material elements that have shaped the lives of African women throughout history. In the past year, he has presented at academic conferences on four continents, curated exhibitions, and premiered a documentary pilot at Meyer Hall, NYU. Through costume design and dramaturgy, he has explored Orisha spirituality in Yoruba culture and its implications for non-conventional femininity, the role of Senegambian haute couture women traders in trans-Atlantic slavery and plaçage, and the experiences of Black women farmers in 1989 Nicodemus, Kansas, using Pearl Cleage’s Flyin’ West. His adaptation of Cinderella reflects Ghanaian romance histories in the post-Kwame Nkrumah era. These inquiries position adornment as a site of memory, resistance, and storytelling.
His research interests include African Art History (20th Century), Material Culture, Decorative Arts, African Performance Theory, Theater History in Africa, Adornment and Sartorial Practices, Women’s Creative and Labor History, Feminist Theory and Philosophy, Ghanaian Indigenous Performances, and Rites of Passage. His geographic focus spans West Africa, the Afro-Diaspora in the USA (Kansas/Louisiana), and Colonial Africa. He is a recipient of the Wasserman Changemaker Fellowship.
COSTUME PRODUCTION & ART-MAKING
Apart from designing, Xorlali Plange is a skilled costume and clothing technologist and artist who works in various art forms, including Akan, Kasena, and Ewe weaving techniques, Krobo glass bead-making, traditional garment construction, Western period costumes, and royal regalia wardrobe for Akan and Ga Queen mothers. He has created installations and directed digital media through content creation and campaigns that highlight African art and fashion.
With expertise in garment construction and costume builds, Plange works in large-scale costume and clothing production, building for large performers with a specialty in beadmaking, fabric painting, textile manipulation, hatmaking, and makeup artistry, including beauty and special effects for the stage.
“It starts with research on the grounds, critically examined, fairly engaged. Then, I experiment with my bare hands. After that, I collaborate to exhibit it on stage, in front of the camera, and then in the windows. It does not go down without sharing it with a piece of chalk. This is what makes me a teacher. ”