Rebecca Jackman
MERCEDES-Benz Fashion Week Cape Town begins today, bringing the city into focus in the eyes of the fashion world until Saturday night.
Designers have been in a frenzy of final touches, fittings, last-minute decisions and fabulous industry events before the main event, the runway shows, begins tonight.
The event, organised by “leading fashion authority” African Fashion International (AFI), will include 15 shows from 27 designers’ spring/summer collections over the next three days.
The Cape Times went backstage at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, where the event is to take place, to see what was happening behind the scenes yesterday.
With a fairly “fluid” idea of the looks that would make it on to the runway, designer Craig Port was hard at work with fittings for his female models.
His new collection The Great British Summer takes its influence from a recent trip to England, where he experienced the summer season of what he joked was “about a week”. He said he had only been to England in winter before and was “blown away” by what the British summer had to offer.
“The whole world seems to congregate there in that week,” Port said.
He loved the positive energy, the colours and cakes, and the inspirational feel of it all.
“It feels like you’re at the pulse of the world.”
The collection creates that feeling by combining classic English style with a modern take, incorporating “eclectic” and “eccentric” contrasts with pastels, lace, satin, silks and quilting. Port’s collection will be showing on Saturday at 7pm and should be thrilling for the audience as they will be transported into a British garden.
Also backstage was Johannesburg-based designer Anisa Mpungwe preparing the final touches on looks from her brand Loin Cloth & Ashes.
She describes her new collection as “quite quirky” as it plays a lot with prints and has “a little bit of a circus vibe” and a hint of Ronald McDonald, as she said one person described it. It’s also “a little Dr Seussy”. The key word for the line started as “ghetto Amish” and developed into “more candyland Amish”, according to Mpungwe.
“It’s almost like Loin Cloth & Ashes on acid.”
Mpungwe said she wanted to look at the idea of something simple and subdued like the clothing of the Amish or Voortrekkers and turn it into something with a “big pop of colour”, taking inspiration from pop art.
“It’s to see something in a different perspective. And it’s important for a designer to have fun when doing a collection.
Other designers showing their collections on the runway on the final night of the city’s biggest fashion event include Lazuli, Lo, Danielle Margaux, Selfi, Leigh Schubert, Lalesso, Kluk CGDT and, for the finale, Fabiani.
Tonight fashionistas will be treated to collections from Marianne Fassler, Lara Klawikowski, Spilt Milk, Gavin Rajah, Stefania Morland, W35T and Shana.
Tomorrow night, after an afternoon of fashion talks, the AFI “Next Generation”, Akedo by Eleni Labrou, Nicholas Coutts, Blanc by Alexandra Blanc and Ernest Mahomane will take to the stage. They will be followed by Michelle Ludek, Tart, Kobus Dippenaar, Ruald Rheeder and Non-European.