Despite the enormous coverage of last year’s Cape Town Fashion Week — in more than 40 countries — there were apparently only a handful of international buyers in attendance.
Paul Jackson, MD, of Leisureworx, the event organiser, said Cape Town differed from international fashion showcases in that the local event has brought designers close to consumers.
‘Our aim is to make it more open to the public. We want to entrench South African brands in consumers’ minds rather than just asking them to buy ‘proudly South African’. Young people want a brand — unless it’s a tin of baked beans,” said Jackson.
In its fourth year Cape Town Fashion Week had 42 shows that included more than 80 designers from 10 African countries. Most were from South Africa.
‘South African designers rely on the local market for sales,” said Jackson, ‘which means there are over 30 000 buyers here — the audience.”
Paying audience members, however, could probably only afford a couple of shows, which was no doubt to their benefit because watching consecutive shows was somewhat tedious.
After two decades in the business the label Hip Hop appears to have a concrete identity that allows a departure from what co-designer Cathy Page-Wood referred to as ‘Eurocentric.”
Their show had a circus theme: there were teenage twins doing acrobatics on scarves suspended from the roof, to the soundtrack I’m too Drunk to Fuck. The models careered with verve and smiles. ‘Fashion is about fun and that’s what South African audiences expect,” said Page-Wood.
New to the scene was seven-year-old model Sade, who ended designer Paul van Zyl’s show in 17th-century splendour. I asked her what she thought the point of a fashion show was. ‘I don’t know,” she replied, ‘but the dresses are pretty.”
For Van Zyl, fashion weeks are indeed about aesthetics: ‘It’s about making beautiful dresses and that’s it. It’s a three-to-four-month creative process — our playtime, our stimulation,” said Van Zyl, who this year cele-brates a decade in the business.
He said a disconcerting factor, however, was that it was difficult to find sponsorship. ‘In Brazil they get as much money to put on the Sao Paulo Fashion Week as Brazil’s soccer team.”
Despite this, many designers have succeed in staging professional shows without funding. One example was Djimbo (township slang for ‘boys”) who complemented their ethnic urban streetwear with djembe drummers and mbiras on stage. A model sauntered on in a striped T-shirt brandishing the slogan ‘Jesus died to save you”.
‘After the show, shop owners ask us to supply our label,” said Djimbo’s Thokozani Msomi. The label started out in a Durban warehouse with ‘zero budget but fuelled with passion”. Msomi boasted that celebrity Gerry Rantseli, spokesperson for Fashion Week, approached them after their show and requested clothes to wear for an interview the next day.
Cape Town Fashion Week founder Gavin Rajah, who in the previous week had shown a collection at Paris Fashion Week (the first local to be invited to participate) said: ‘Paris is all about the business of fashion but Cape Town will get there.” He said he was pleased that the event has remained true to its original intention ‘to offer a bird’s-eye-view on established talent that has commercial appeal, and potential to become global brands”.
But to less-established individuals who create garments, skill is something that is acquired after hard work. Noluthando Njokwana was encouraged to start doing beading and finishing for Paul van Zyl instead of being a menial worker. ‘It was difficult to learn, even though I used to bead my own things,” said Njokwana, who was attending a fashion show for the first time.
But this small feel good story was not the only one colouring the event. Malcolm Kluk and partner Christiaan Gabriel du Toit this year requested that the audience make donations to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital Trust.
‘Fashion is very much about me, the consumer, and what I look like,” said Kluk. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to do something for others too. We wanted to make a difference,” he said.
But a man in a suit and converse sneakers, seated behind me, was more interested in looking good than doing good. Turning to the woman beside him, he said: ‘I wouldn’t want people to look at me and say ‘he’s got a nice personality.’”
That’s fashion for you.
Happening on the fringe of fashion
In the coming week Johannesburg will be a hot spot for fashionistas, as well as the plain-yet-culturally-discerning, with the celebration of South Africa’s 10th annual Fashion Week. Free Style, which opens at Afronova in Newtown, Johannesburg on July 25, is the gem of a few photographic exhibitions running in tandem with the Fashion Week programme. The stars of the show are acclaimed fashion photographer Crispian Plunkett, cheeky design collaboration Strangelove, in partnership with Hannelie Coetzee, and Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo” Veleko, a fine-art photographer and project manager at the Market Photo Workshop.
While purists may regard the link between fine art and fashion as tenuous, these creative souls are pioneering hybridity within South Africa’s art and design industries.
Carlo Gibson and Ziemek Pater of Strangelove have been pushing the boundaries of fashion design in South Africa since 2001. Their shows are characteristically, perhaps infamously, unconventional, and they have married their penchant for beautiful clothes with a love for art and theatre through numerous collaborations with artists. Coetzee and Strangelove’s contribution to Free Style is a selection of colour photographs, the products of a recent joint undertaking to explore the possibility of the garment as a catalyst for a shift of psychological state. The fine-art baggage is neatly packaged in fun, aesthetically agreeable images. Be sure to attend the opening at 6pm, where Strangelove are set to show off some of their latest creations.
Plunkett, currently enjoying huge success in fashion and commercial photography, both locally and internationally, presents new personal work together with retrospective images. Veleko contributes a thought-provoking body of work concerned with notions of African identity and tradition in an urban setting. Her documentation of street fashion using ‘found models” is particularly interesting.
The cast is fresh, the content is exciting, and with an opening event that promises to be nothing but hip, this is a show not to be missed. — Annie Buys