Unraveling the Seams at the Cape Town Fashion Week

There is something fundamentally wrong with our (South African) fashion sector if we are now experiencing young designers protesting outside fashion weeks. Student designers from the Cape Town based Cape Peninsula University of Technology, held a silent protest outside the Cape Town Fashion Week venue because they were “excluded from participating in the event.”

I feel the blame for this dispiriting turn of events falls at the door of the primary organizers - African Fashion International. How can they request emerging designers to pay R150 000 plus VAT when the creation of more fashion events in South Africa have been punted to promote South African design content and encourage the development of emerging South African fashion designers?

When a division of a retail chain store “Young Designers Emporium” (YDE), which is owned by Truworths declines to participate in the event because the fee “exceeded their budget” one has to ask is the PR about wanting to develop fashion design in South Africa just rhetoric?

For Lorato Liphuko, the fashion liaison officer for African Fashion International to say that designers are excluded because they are unable to “ produce orders on a large scale” is a pitiable excuse. South African fashion designers find it extremely difficult to produce in quantity due to the fragmentation of the entire South African clothing and textile value chain.

If, according to Liphuko, this is the case then African Fashion International must be consistent in their argument and should have by extension excluded the emerging designers that participated in the 2007 MTN Durban Fashion Week because many if not all of them cannot at this juncture in their careers produce on “ a large scale”, furthermore African Fashion International must articulate what they mean by “ large scale” production.