This year’s Smirnoff International Fashion Awards featured a return to design basics Charl Blignaut I was a touch anxious as I settled into my seat for the South African leg of the annual Smirnoff International Fashion Awards at Vodaworld in Midrand last Friday night. It wasn’t the over-abundance of ruthless Pretoria kugels or the Afrikaans queens with dangerously gelled hair that was making me nervous. Nor that the entire front row was reserved for members of the provincial government and their families, each dressed less stylishly than the next, one pot-bellied beaurocrat demonstrating his strong grasp of fashion-show etiquette by repeatedly getting up and fetching whole bowls of biltong from the foyer. No, it was this year’s design brief that had me worried: Liberation. My mind flashed back to previous years at the Smirnoffs. Who could forget the designer who interpreted the theme of Decadence by crafting an astonishing structure depicting an eaten apple with a rotten core? If the Smirnoff finalists have, in the past, chosen the easier option of demonstrating fantasy costuming rather than strong basic design, this year quite the opposite went down. The 24 finalists for 2000 opted to demonstrate liberation by embracing African and ethnic cultures, fusing the local with strong international lines and dashes of Eighties and futurist pop flavour. Many found liberation in the earthiness of their fabrics – in beading, buckskin, crochet, wool, leather and feathers – and in the freeing up of the female form. One found it in creating streetwise maternity gear. The eventual winner – Ingrid Motlhamare from Linea Academy in Durban – found freedom in denim, the fabric that liberated the world. Her showcase garment was a grand, rough-hewn denim affair with a long train, a shawl, turban and simple sandals, all fashioned from denim. The designer, older than the rest of the field, sat smiling calmly through the post-awards press conference as judges praised her humility and intelligence. A qualified political scientist, she gave up her job in Zeerust to return to college to study fashion. She walked off with R20 000 and an invitation to compete against designers from over 30 other countries at the Smirnoff international finals in New York City in November this year. Motlhamare is only the second black winner in the eight years of the South African competition. There’s liberation for you. Renata Grobbelaar, the second-place winner from Port Elizabeth Technikon, took Jean- Paul Gaultier’s words – and influence – to heart when he said that one should make a point of walking a mile in another culture’s shoes. Her American-Indian, Eskimo-styled combinations featured bold lines and original materials. Chereen Anderson, one of five finalists from Lisof in Johannesburg, came in third. Her Japanese styles and raised, handcrafted block-print fabric offered an accentuated female form and something a little more conceptual. Like a lot of the better designers, she was able to combine that plastic Eighties Big-in-Japan glamour with the earthy individualism of the new millennium.
We saw it at Fashion Week and at Africa Designs and we saw it again very clearly in Midrand last weekend. The new school has arrived.