South Africa’s Soweto gets its fashion week (Part I)

South Africa’s Soweto gets its fashion week (Part I)

Struggling but deserving designers will get a chance to show work inspired by the creativity and history of South Africa’s most famous township in Soweto’s first fashion week opening Thursday.

The township on Johannesburg’s south-western edge was the natural place for a show for new designers, said 23-year-old entrepreneur and Soweto Fashion Week organizer Stephen Manzini.

"You walk around Soweto, you see creativity everywhere," Manzini said.

Manzini didn’t ask designers to show extensive collections or charge them take part, unlike the country’s more established fashion weeks. Fashion blogger Mahlatse James says this gives a chance to designers who have not yet made a name to have a chance to
show their work to boutique owners and potential investors.

"Creative’s from Soweto do need their platform," James said. "If the other fashion platforms cannot afford them that, they have to create their own." Manzini acknowledges Soweto Fashion Week is an ambitious title for his three-day showcase of 16 designers.
Rehearsals were held in the parking lot and garden of a modest apartment borrowed from a tailor friend, in a northern Johannesburg neighbourhood some designers found difficult to reach by taxi van, the main form of cheap mass transportation in South Africa.

"We refused to be stopped because we don’t have funding," said Manzini, who raised 60,000 rand (about $7,500) from churches, business people and other sponsors for the event. His mother, a nurse, tapped her contacts and acted as chairwoman of the event,
and is someone off whom he could bounce ideas, Manzini said.

Manzini is confident that in coming years, the event will grow to a full week and give many more designers an opportunity. He hopes to start his own business distributing designs that will first take the catwalk this week.

Soweto has long been known for its quirky sense of style, with designers splashing bright colours and urban sensibilities on everything from the latest silhouettes on European runways to reworking of the dapper suits Nelson Mandela wore when he lived in
the township in the 1940s. The older Mandela is best known for his relaxed but colourful shirts. But as a younger man, the son of a royal family was a political celebrity in Soweto, and dressed the part.

"The style that Nelson Mandela rocked in his day," and other looks from the 1940s and 1950s are popular among Soweto designers, said fashion writer James, who himself sports a shaved part in his hair, like Mandela had as a young man.

Short URL: https://www.newspakistan.pk/?p=23269

Posted by Fahad Zafar on May 24 2012. Filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry