According to well-known fashion fundi Dion Chang, programme director of the event, the system that has been set up is intended to be a preview of fashion ranges for the following summer, in this instance 2004. But the predatory nature of the industry is hampering indigenous development.
‘We’re trying to get into the designers the mentality that you work internationally. You work a year in advance,” Chang says. ‘The reason why it doesn’t work is because we don’t have the buy-in of chain stores, who will order now for next summer. They still send their buyers overseas.
‘They buy samples from Gap, or wherever, bring it home, knock it off and copy it. And you’re left with this quagmire of mediocrity. There’s no spark, there’s no innovation.”
While complaints abound Fashion Week were presented, as always, by an upbeat industry and attended by a glowing (if overdressed) media fan base. Models wearing local big brands — Stoned Cherrie, Loxion Kulca, Clive, Sun Godd’ess — paraded the catwalk with an attitude that declared it to be business as usual. Aesthetically, that translates as a fusion of clothing and pop culture.
Presentation is reaching epic proportions as design houses enlist video artists, rappers, poets, jazz, kwaito and R&B musicians to drive their styles home.
There was an ample display of black brutality — punky Mohican hairstyles and exposed flesh. Stoned Cherrie replaced the ubiquitous image of Che Guevara, now blazoned on a million off-the-peg t-shirts, with the face of Steve Biko.
First up at the trade fair of almost 100 operators was the kiosk of Fashion Week’s prime sponsor, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Fashion spokesperson for the department Tembeka Mlauli was in her element as she delivered her verdict: ‘We’ve got talent in this country! I’ll give you an example: If you look at Loxion Kulca, it needs someone to nurture it until it’s a brand. It can go to the level of Nike and Levis. And it is not just a talent of designing. It is a talent of incorporating good designs and the realities of people. You can wear these garments anywhere. What I like about them is that they are very good with their marketing strategy. They have a certain type of consumer that they are going to lock into.”
Mlauli’s opinion holds weight. Fashion Week, as she points out, is becoming the nursery and a talent- spotting forum for a process of development that will take local designers to new heights. The system that Mlauli’s department is putting in place integrates potential with what she refers to, matrimonially, as ‘aftercare”.
‘We are the ones who have given [Loxion Kulca] the stage. We paid for that as the DTI because we saw a talent there. We have different incentives, several incentives that they can now use in terms of marketing themselves further. They are already exporting to Africa, in Botswana a lot of people are buying their clothes.
‘Last year we just funded Fashion Week and that was it. This year we said, ‘lets have an aftercare’. For example, for those who are not ready for export we run export-readiness courses.”
Bad news for designers and manufacturers is that the DTI has an assessment period of three years.
If ideas don’t become translated into rands, if there are no ‘dividends” as Mlauli describes them, ‘it means it won’t happen”. ‘We must start to see they are growing, we must see revenues coming into their companies. When they bring in their statements, we see that we’ve sent these people to a national pavilion in the world and these are the orders they’ve managed to come back with.”
Clearly, the DTI is offering designers incentives, but they’re also putting local design to the test. Stoned Cherrie and others were sent to Japan last year but, unfortunately, as Mlauli points out, orders have yet to roll in.
This year Gauteng Tourism footed the bill for what has been dubbed a Pan-African Pavilion. Kenya Fashion Week is now in its third year. Its staff was in attendance and was able to compare their country’s fledgling event with our veteran of seven years running.
Kenya Fashion Week this year had 60 exhibitors at its trade fair and most showed capsule collections of 10 garments each. Guest of honour was Kenya’s culture minister Najib Balala.
Lounging on the long couches of the stylish media enclosure in Sandton, hushed rumour abounded of the war between SA Fashion Week and Nederburg Cape Town Fashion Week. But nothing official was said. (A little damage control had even been executed by Nederburg in giving away small bottles of what tasted like sparkling piss).
On the runway, African models wore a smattering of animal skins. And unlike at Cape Town Fashion Week, there were no animal rights activists in protest, causing one to reflect on the diverse value systems within the local fashion industry.