Navigating between successful labels such as Sun Godd’ess and Stoned Cherrie, Vlisco hopes to hit the as yet untargeted market of luxury African fashion when it launches the first of its three new fashion labels this week.
‘In South Africa, we’ve done the streetwear identity very, very well but no one has really gone for luxury,” said Dion Chang, Vlisco’s interim creative manager for its fashion range. ‘We don’t do Afro-Gucci and this is a perfect space to target that market.”
In December last year, Vlisco put the process in motion to transform itself from a textiles manufacturer, which specialises in Dutch wax fabrics, to a leading pan-African fashion house.
‘We are looking at a five to 10 times increase in turnover,” said interim manager Rutger-Jan van Spaandonk, who admitted that the move into fashion design was partially a reaction to increased pressure on textile production from lower-cost countries.
Vlisco’s new fashion range, labelled Aziza or ‘gorgeous” in Swahili, will be ‘sleek, modern and contemporary”, according to Van Spaandonk. ‘But the fabric and the use of the fabric gives it an authentic feel.”
Clients are already lining up for the Aziza Couture range of individually tailored items designed by Bongiwe Wazala, which is available from this week onwards. Wazala will measure and fit clients on their premises for special events, charging anywhere from R10 000 to R15 000.
Former Stoned Cherrie designer Thabani Mavundla is busy putting together the Aziza Collection range of ready-to-wear luxury items, which will be launched at South African Fashion Week in July. These garments will be on sale in Vlisco boutiques for between R1 000 to R1 200.
The third range of basic, must-have items, under the label Aziza Authentics, will be sold in upmarket department stores from the end of June.
Each range will have its own accessories, and a cosmetics and jewellery collection is being planned for 2007.
The range is set to target buyers who have had one or two promotions at work, are ‘extremely into fashion” and value quality highly, said Van Spaandonk, adding that Vlisco seeks to do for African fashion what Shanghai Tang did for Asian fashion.
The Hong Kong label reportedly transformed the label ‘Made in China” from humorous to haute by fusing traditional Chinese fashion with modern styles and colours.
‘The range does not go out of its way to conform to a certain style; it’s not trying to be particularly African,” said Mavundla. ‘But I think the fabric has got that association already and it’s nice to have that as a background.”
An example from the Vlisco range would be a little black number that looks like a conventional cocktail dress from afar, but is made from one of Vlisco’s embossed black fabrics.
Other ‘surprises” that are important for the discerning luxury buyer include leather belts and shoes lined with Vlisco fabric, said Chang. Vlisco iPod cases and notebooks will help launch the 150-year-old company into the 21st century, he added.
Vlisco will use South Africa as a test market. If the model is successful, it will be rolled out in other countries.
In the long term, said Chang, Vlisco hopes to enter the export market: ‘It is rooted in South Africa, using South African designs, but its future is pan-African and global.”
‘The whole concept is about radiant beauty. We want to clothe confident, outgoing people,” said Van Spaandonk. ‘This is not Armani, which has a million different shades of gray, brown and black. We are not about understatement. We are about bold.”
But the budding fashion house is aware that its bright, bold colours are interpreted differently around the continent.
The Dutch company first traded Indonesian fabrics in West Africa in the mid-1800s, and the colonial wax textiles and Java prints have, ironically, come to signal ‘authentic Africanness” in the region.
In countries such as Togo, Vlisco has also become a status symbol, and a lucrative source of income for the Mercedes-driving ‘Mama-Benzes” who sell its product. In South Africa, however, Vlisco’s textiles can seem ‘loud and exotic”, said Chang, especially in comparison with local fabrics such as shweshwe.
But Mavundla said the fabric’s distinctiveness is a bonus and makes his garments stand out. He added that Vlisco manufactures a huge array of fabrics. ‘You get the more widely known wax Java fabrics, but also the lesser-known prints, more earthy colours and rich prints.”
Vlisco is conscious that its new range will have to bridge divergent buying patterns in Africa.
In West Africa, having your clothes made is the norm and buying off the rack is seen as a luxury, said Van Spaandonk, while in South Africa people are used to buying European luxury garments off the rack and now want something with an African influence made locally by a tailor. ‘Where the trends come together is in the desire for contemporary African fashion.”