Cape Town - Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Cape Town begins on Thursday July 24, and runs until Saturday.
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 (Thursday).
The event, organised by 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 on Wednesday.
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 will include Lazuli, Lo, Danielle Margaux, Selfi, Leigh Schubert, Lalesso, Kluk CGDT and, for the finale, Fabiani.
On Thursday night 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.
I want to make fun, chic clothes that sell well – designer
Jessica Ross could be “the hottest new name” in Cape Town fashion.
She is one of four fashion students, and the only one from Cape Town, chosen to take part in the African Fashion International (AFI) Fastrack incubator programme, devised to accelerate the careers of a handful of lucky – and talented – designers. As part of the programme she is serving a three-month internship with top designer Gavin Rajah, with the potential of employment after this.
And, just for fun and because she has some modelling experience, she’s walking the runway in one of Rajah’s 77 looks at the opening Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Cape Town, for which she helped design details.
Ross, 22, said she always wanted to be a fashion designer. When she attended open days at fashion colleges in Grade 9 she knew “This is it!”
Before attending the Cape Town College of Fashion Design, she focused on learning how to use Photoshop, graphic design and any skills that would benefit her in the fashion industry.
After a gap year in which she travelled to Israel on a learning programme, as well as spent time on a kibbutz and a stint working at a horse ranch assisting with autistic children, she returned to begin her career in fashion.
“I couldn’t wait to put all my effort into design.”
A classically trained dancer, Ross is also a qualified hip hop teacher and competed in the Good Hope hip hop national championship last month. She brought the discipline and work ethic of dance into her blossoming career in fashion.
Rajah said a good work ethic went a long way in the industry. Many design school graduates entered the industry and “suddenly have nervous breakdowns” because they were designing a lot more than five outfits a year.
He said he dragged his interns through every process so they learnt new techniques and “unlearn” any bad habits because it was “so diverse” going from a classroom to the business environment. It was necessary to train young people, to produce good designers.
“I try to teach them to play to their strengths, but to strengthen their vulnerabilities,” Rajah said.
When the internship is complete, Ross and fellow Fastrack designers Rich Mnisi, Tuelo Ngunyuka and Naazeen Kagee will design capsule collections for the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Africa runway in October. One of the four will win the title of Young Designer of the Year at the AFI Africa Fashion Awards.
Ross wants to make clothes that “sell well” because they are comfortable, chic and sophisticated, but fun. For her upcoming collection she wants to incorporate all that, but says she has to wait for the brief from AFI before she can proceed.
Cape Times