Evita Bezuidenhout would have loved these designs for a national costume, writes HAZEL FRIEDMAN
THE designers might have been billed as the Young Lions of local fashiondom, but some of the creations spawned by the finalists of the South African Fashion Designers Association (Safda) competition would have been more deserving of disaster-relief aid than a national fashion award.
A combined Safda and Expo Fashion initiative, last weekend’s fashion extravaganza set out to showcase the work of undiscovered designers, encourage the growth of the local fashion industry and bridge the gap between the formal retail fashion sector and informal-sector designers in South Africa. But some of the 10 hopefuls vying for the opportunity to design a national costume for South Africa’s entrant into the Miss Universe competition either weren’t adequately briefed or wilfully chose to design a costume not for a Miss Universe candidate, but for a contestant vying for the crown of Miss Multi-culti Grunge Queen.
Mind you, there was something cringingly parochial about some of the designs on show: a post-modern variation on a blourokkie theme; lion prints and doilies; generic African headdresses and traditional weaponry adorned with high-tech baubles. As for the casual-wear ensembles serving as teasers, one little number designed by Elizabeth Mononyane – with beaded bodice and strips of tulle serving as knee pads – surpassed even the national costume designs in terms of over-the-top opulence.
Then there was the lion-print “air hostess” frock replete with pill-box hat that would have made Evita Bezuidenhout preen with pride; not to mention the Ho Chi Mihn dress-alikes nor the Middle Eastern garment designed by Pauline Mashabela, who obviously took the competition’s revolutionary subtext very seriously, judging from the keffiyeh draped seductively in the style of legendary PLO freedom-fighter Leilah Khaled.
In the “innovative and attractive, but more suited to Merlin the magician” category was a flowing, silkscreened cape by Zelda Gardner, who was awarded the most promising designer prize. But, disappointingly, the pieces de resistance in general seemed to totter towards the seamy side of things, with Madonna-style coned breasts on skintight corsets and other adornments that added new meaning to the term “streetwear”.
The menswear – ranging from Armani-inspired oatmeal daywear by Sandile Kula (who won the most innovative designer award) and 1970s Afro-American style “threads” to Robert Hortz’s classically lined, ethnically detailed garments, and zebra-print dinner jackets by Hein Reinders – was more palatable.
The fact that Reinders collected the trophy for best national costume was practically a foregone conclusion. His was not simply the most elegant costume on the catwalk. With its translation of the South African flag into a sequinned ballgown, replete with papal head gear (the sybolism of which eludes me), it was the only design to even vaguely make a suitable national costume and striking fashion statement in one.
And that’s the point. While designing a national costume is not unlike designing a national flag, it requires much more than a sense of symbolic and patriotic pride. It constitutes a combination of sign, statement and style. And the degree to which all three components are integrated is what separates a beauty pageant from a day at the races, and a national constume from a national disaster.