Before joining Fashion Week in 2001 I had edited a few short books and done projects for them. From the outset, I had been reporting on the Fashion Week collections as part of my work at Elle magazine. I visited Paris and other fashion weeks. I took that international standard and applied it. I had to be diplomatic and gentle with my remarks on designers’ work. Although it was constructive criticism, I was a bit nervous and wasn’t sure how people would take it. Jacques from Black Coffee came to me after one such write-up and said: ‘Thank you. It’s the first time somebody’s actually been honest with me.”
Those were halcyon days. Everything was fresh and new. You had the feeling that you were really trail- blazing, pushing the limits. There were no rigid parameters. We had just come out of a post-apartheid South Africa and for the first time there were some quite radical designers. Quite a few of those designers — David West, Row-G and Abigail Betz, Craig Native and Maya Prass (who has done well with Woolworths) — were slightly ahead of their time.
Internationally, a number of Belgian designers were doing conceptual work that had a ripple effect in South Africa. Designers were also taking note of what the Japanese were doing. It was exciting. We weren’t forging an African identity; we were just so glad to be free and flexing some creative muscle. Then, slowly, a broad African nationalism and pride began to emerge. On the one hand, people were saying we’ve got to be African, and on the other young designers were creating amazing stuff that I feel was equal to anything on the international scene.
However, on a youth and street level, a resistance grew to blanket African pride and heritage. People were saying how ridiculous it was that, for example, at the opening of Parliament white women MPs were appearing in African regalia. Their clothes not only seemed odd, but also more Nigerian or Central African than South African.
Then along came Stoned Cherrie. I believe Stoned Cherrie really was the turning point for South African streetwear.
In 2000, Stoned Cherrie started to reference not a cultural but a political heritage that suddenly caught the public imagination. They did an Andy Warhol-type T-shirt print, but with Steve Biko’s face on it. They did T-shirts with slogans like ‘Shebeen Queen”, or focused on things relevant to the mindset. They zoomed in closely on contemporary African culture such as Drum magazine, the Fifties people and Sophiatown, using all that iconography and translating it into a clothing label. From there, all hell just broke loose. Nobody had ever done anything remotely like this.
From 2000 on, there has been more public interest in fashion, and a lot more awareness at government level. Slowly, the chain stores have also realised the value of fashion. The fact that Edgars has finally decided to take on some designers is a benchmark of how the industry has grown. If it weren’t for Fashion Week, the fashion industry would not be where it is today.
One of the first people who really struck it big internationally was Craig Native, who hit a nerve in the collective psyche. Native did a modern take on South African culture, became well known in Germany and Holland, and had an agent in Hamburg. His rise to fame was incredible — but although he was one of the first designers to achieve real success in landing export orders, he was struggling to pay his rent. He had the orders, but no infrastructure or manufacturing framework to rely on. He was buying his fabric on Grey Street in Durban. It almost forced him into liquidation.
When I joined fashion week the suggestion arose that we should focus on the ‘business of fashion”. Until then, there was no business follow through after a designer’s show. Fashion Week started as a show platform and then progressed to the business side. We first lobbied the Clothes and Textiles Federation. We were granted 15 minutes by the Federation in Cape Town to present our case.
Launching Fashion Week was a case of starting from scratch. It has had to be a facilitation organisation. In South Africa, everything is done for the designers because they don’t have the infrastructure or press bureau, or they can’t afford all the models. There are a handful of designers who have liquid cash and are able to have a public relations agent to handle the invitations plus a producer, and so on. For the majority, Fashion Week fulfils all of those roles on their behalf.
Fashion Week is a marketing platform. Designers get huge publicity from it. I hope that Fashion Week will become the facilitation platform that it’s meant to be, and not a charity institution. At Fashion Week a genuine attempt is made to create a sustainable fashion industry where designers can flourish. If you can’t generate sustainable sales within your own country to different boutiques, you’re not going to be able to export. We are not even a fledgling industry; we are still an embryonic industry.
But fashion is also about the glamour and the parties. We are trying to have fun. After all, what would a Fashion Week be without an air kiss or two?
Dion Chang is the programme director of Sanlam South African Fashion Week
Sanlam South African Fashion Week takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, and in city venues from July 27 to 30 and includes an exhibition where designer items will be sold to the public. Regional collections will be shown in Cape Town in the Daylight Studio on August 2 and 3; in Pretoria at the Department of Trade and Industry on August 10 and 11; and Durban Harbour on August 16 and 17. Limited seats available through Computicket. Visit: www.safashion.co.za
The naked truth
The history of South Africa is written in thread. With the passage of time, garments have been constructed and styles have been borrowed or imposed in tune with changing social and political mores. Designers weave the threads of place and time into stories. When we wear their garments, we carry those stories with us. So if we want to know who we are or where we come from, we need only look in our closets.
It has not always been this way. Just a decade ago, South African clothing said very little about its people. Like much of the world, we mostly wore vernacular sportswear — which told generic American or European stories. If you were to strip away everything that was borrowed, and also with the sprinkling of historically frozen ethnic styles worn on formal occasions, South Africans stood naked before the universe.
However, in the short intervening period, we have assembled a rather impressive wardrobe. Indeed, South African fashion has recently undergone nothing less than a revolution. It has been transformed in countless ways — aesthetically, in terms of its identity and also behind the scenes, where chainstore monopolies have succumbed to a wide range of independent designers. The background of these designers has also changed dramatically. Disadvantaged innovators now have the chance to become established and contribute to the fashion marketplace. The result is a fresh, new Afro-urban aesthetic that truly reflects the flavour of this country.
And yet, I don’t think the public has any idea how instrumental South African Fashion Week has been in setting the stage for this revolution. If you think it runs for a few days a year, you’re dead wrong. For the past decade, Lucilla Booyzen and her team have worked all year round, forging links between young designers and sponsors, running fusion workshops, and securing funding to facilitate the evolution of this extraordinary, contemporary South African style.
When this country made its transition to democracy, we witnessed some very obvious declarations of patriotism on our catwalks. We had our fair share of ‘folklorish” garments and sequinned South African flag ball-gowns. But gradually, designers have explored less obvious areas of inspiration and forged a more subtle identity in cloth that, season by season, continues to amaze and surprise. A decade on, and we have transcended the clichés that once threatened to hold us captive.
By challenging the boundaries of political correctness, designers have offered us a far more diverse reflection of this country’s heritage. The styles that were borrowed over the years were cleverly — and often cheekily — reinvented. Vintage European clothing has been so absorbed by township street style, we come to think of it as South African. Rather than simply drawing on ethnic stereotypes, designers have come to explore a wide range of themes: origins; historical styles; landscape; our history of resistance; ‘Afrofuturism”; and, most excitingly, the insane jumble of styles we see daily on South African streets.
But perhaps the local fashion industry’s greatest achievement over the past decade is that, as South Africans, we actually think about what we wear. Creating that consciousness has been a mammoth task. The media has played a key role by championing designers, capturing their creativity through the lenses of talented photographers, and gradually creating a critical platform that is essential to the development of local fashion. — Adam Levin