couture set Charl Blignaut It was a classic case of a headline in search of a story, but still, South African Fashion Week (SAFW) will one day be grateful to journalist Craig Jacobs. He may have been the subject of more elegantly hissed expletives than any other hack in the history of local fashion, but it was his article – “Fake fur flies in catwalk war” – in a popular Sunday newspaper on the eve of the fourth annual SAFW that helped generate that final wave of publicity needed to nudge the showcase event to a whole new level. Of course, instead of declaring it the year of the absent established designer, Jacobs could just as well have opened his programme and declared 2000 the year of the rising young designer, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. In the two days leading up to Tuesday night’s opening shows, everyone – from radio talk hosts to television news reporters – was buzzing about the allegations that established local designers were boycotting Fashion Week. It was all hype and mostly nonsense, of course, but all of a sudden the event was making news. And all of a sudden the said “old school” felt compelled to emerge from their studios and declare their support of the event – from Marianne Fassler to Norman Callan.
Thanks to one dubious editorial angle, two things were made abundantly clear – local fashion was still fragile enough to unite when attacked and now all eyes would be on the young designers presenting their collections. The pressure was on. What a pleasure it was, then, to see how, one by one, the new school rose to the occasion. Even the common or garden South African social columnist – a species generally comprising dimwitted trendoids and out- moded buzzards – couldn’t have missed the fact that, in the past four years, South African fashion has spawned its next generation of designers. All they had to do was look at the audience around them. There were virtually no kugels in sight. There were precious few “best dressed women”, barely no Egoli stars and hardly a single ex-Miss South Africa. On the catwalk, too, it was evident that the old school of shiny, large-shouldered African glamour was being undermined by a chic new school of well-researched, forward thinking elegance (Stoned Cherrie’s Nokwandah and Thabane).
The shimmery ballgowns and internationally referenced couture of the old school of celebrity dressers was equally undermined by the honest, trendsetting, multifunction wearability of the streetwise new kids on the block (David West, Black Coffee, Row G and Abigail Betz). Even the few remaining stars of Fashion Weeks past (Clive Rundle) pushed a more experimental street edge. Of course there was much hideousness and blatant trendiness on show. Sure we sorely missed Fassler and Julian and Errol Arendz. And of course there’s still a way to go yet, but after last week it’s clear that SAFW’s taken another step in the right direction. It’s defining itself without relying on the conventions of the established international fashion weeks and it’s creating its own new stars. Within a year or two you can bet that West, Betz, Rahim, Jacques van der Watt, the kids from Stoned Cherrie and even Jacobs – if he can scale that rock star mountain – will be as important as anyone who stayed home this year, whatever their reasons.