As African designs gain more recognition, are designers getting credit?

BY FANELE CHESTER

This year the Annual Industry Conference 2010 organized by the Cape Town Fashion Council and Design Indaba touched on an important subject, particularly for South Africa (Africa’s center of fashion). The main problem identified was: yes, Africans designers have incredible talent, but why aren’t they making money out of it? Especially with international designers making a lot of money using African designers as inspiration, so what is holding the industry back?

Coincidentally the week before, VOGUE and Council of Fashion Designers America (CFDA)’s Best Dressed List 2010, showed Blake Lively in a tribal-inspired Marchesa Resort 2011 Collection dress, which she had worn during Fashion’s Night Out 2010; an attractive dress intricately beaded with yellow and black beads that showed a great deal of attention to detail by the designers, making the dress even more special.

Blake Lively

VOGUE.COM: Week of November 16, 2010. Special Edition: Best Dressed of The Year. The ten individualists whom VOGUE celebrates as the Best Dressed of 2010 are gamely rewriting the rules. Or rather, showing us all that there are no rules beyond staying true to oneself. (Blake Lively, The Bombshell, Marchesa Resort 2011 Collection)

The million dollar question remains: how is it that Marchesa gets the praise for essentially an African design?

Below are some thoughts on this as discussed during the annual Design Indaba conference.

Alex Harris, FOSCHINI (Retailer):
What we’re looking at is how we can take design capability here and take it forward. A lot of us are looking at how we can give a vehicle for designers to cotton onto a manufacturing base. Even as retailers, we have a responsibility to help the designers today. Not for ourselves, but to establish the local design and market.

I asked the guys, what are international designers’ doing? And I was actually quite horrified. I saw hundreds of thousands of styles, that are going from India, India to London, India to Europe, India to USA, with African inspiration. We’ve got international designers that are actually using our designs.Why aren’t we looking right here? How can we take that inspiration and that excitement that we’ve got right here to the next level? We provide manufacturing capability as retailers, but I think we need to get our own differentiation into the marketplace.

Mark Gooding, HOUSE OF MONATIC (Retailer):
I think what retailers are learning now is that you create a loyal brand and that people belong to your brand. Our brand differentiation comes from having design elements and doing things unique.

Nkhensani Nkosi, STONED CHERRIE (Designer, Entrepreneur):
If we’re saying that design is important part of that, then we need to start engaging young designers, and creating more design entrepreneurs, because I think (presently) the emphasis is on creativity. Although technical skill is obviously everything, we need to create people who can build up businesses. Otherwise we’ll constantly have this lopsided industry that currently exists, where there’s the illusion of success (for) young designers. It is an illusion because they look great on the ramp, and all of that, but it means nothing because at the end of the day they have no volume, no distribution.

I (also) think we need to be careful that people don’t become co-opted into these big institutions, and lose identity and lose authenticity. Creating own brands is fantastic, but are we really tapping into the people who are custodians of design, and who have given their lives towards design?

The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and Vogue, possibly two of the most important entities in fashion in the world, acknowledge that there is a lot Africa can give to fashion that is uniquely African, is high fashion, appeals to the rest of the world, and is above all, wearable & bankable.

The Cape Town Fashion Council (CTFC) has also realized this, and being at the helm of African fashion, has to find a way to harness this potential and creativity, and make sure that Africa and Africans not only receive the praise for something that belongs to them, but also receive the revenue from it.

Fanele’s blog: FASHION ET AL

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