Zuri obtains fabrics and designs from Kenya and other African countries, creating jobs.



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African style is making its way to New York City. In June this year, the Brooklyn Museum hosted Africa Fashion, one of North America’s largest exhibits celebrating African clothing and craftsmanship. From being highlighted on fashion runways to new stores popping up around the city, fashion from the continent is creeping into the wardrobes of many New Yorkers.



One fast-growing store is Zuri, which opened a few years ago in downtown Manhattan. The brand prides itself on obtaining fabrics and designs from Kenya and other African countries.



“We are hiring different artists from there, who then produce the pieces,” Tiffany Collins, an employee at Zuri, tells FORBES AFRICA. “Then it’s shipped. So you kind of create this ecosystem that continuously flows. You’re creating jobs, and you’re paying people fair, livable wages.”



Workers at Zuri hope their efforts will make African clothes a staple in wardrobes.



“More celebration and understanding of the textile and the process and what really goes into producing those beautiful pieces,” is what Collins wishes for. “So many hands have touched them prior to them even getting here.”

Screen Shot 2023-12-19 at 15.09.04

Rocking African Style In Manhattan

Kenyan fashion entrepreneur Ruth Abade uses upcycled materials to create vibrant clothes and accessories with sustainability sewn into them.



&#8220;It was something I’ve never seen. I was like, ‘maybe this is what they mean by the end of the world?’ The sky looked orange. And then it just went really, really dark.”



In June, the New York skies were flooded with apocalyptic color, as Canadian wildfires moved south and the smoke transformed the global center of fashion into a burned sienna hellscape.



Kenyan fashion entrepreneur Ruth Abade is in the city for trade shows, describing by video call this ominous reminder of the consequences of unfettered consumption: the world’s most charismatic metropolis reduced in minutes to incandescent shadows.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-59362" style="width:388px;height:291px" width="388" height="291" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000315-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 388px) 100vw, 388px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photos by Lars Johansson</figcaption></figure></div>


She is the owner of Blackfly Designs, an apparel, jewelry and textile company with practical sustainability embedded in its seams.



Abade and her dozen-strong team, based in Kibera’s Toi Market in Nairobi, use upcycled materials to create one-of-a-kind clothes and accessories buzzing with quirky innovation.



Blackfly’s bomber jackets pop with the vibrancy of re-purposed Indian saris; its shoulder bags are clever, jazzy patchworks of African fabric off-cuts, finished with expertly curated scraps of leather and salvaged metal fittings. The jewelry pieces are geometric alignments of the rough and the smooth, metallic juxtapositions of the polished and the well-traveled.



An industrial designer by training, Abade spent a year in Florence learning leather bag design before her skills coalesced into a business in 2012.



“So I took my industrial know-how into fashion, because I needed to survive! And then when your clientele grows, you harness all these scrap pieces as off-cuts, so I needed to develop another prototype. You have to embody the whole thing as one 



item. So we decided that if you’re going to use scrap pieces, you’re going to use them all the way. You have to always be diverse when it comes to creation, because it never stops.”



The brand grew so fast that the company began buying off-cuts from other tailors, generating a business model that initially presented challenges in how it would grow and become accessible to a wider market.



“When you’re doing one-offs, it’s difficult to sell to big retailers,” Abade says. “It’s also very difficult to sell to small stores, because they need to make a mark-up. And I wanted to create a product anybody can afford. So I had to make a decision. Either I build my own store – or people just come to the workshop.”



The brand now sells directly to its Nairobi base and from its website; it eschews the influencer and social- media-driven demand for the latest must-have, a wasteful production cycle which floods the market with cheap copycats that often end their short lives in African landfill.



“It doesn’t matter to me whether the business expands tremendously or not,” she says. “You have to stay true to the reason why you do it. We started this because of the overflow we had, but it’s also the joy of working with the suppliers who have always had our back, where the person is willing to sacrifice anything for you – because you’ve been with them for 10 years, and never gone away.”


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-59363" style="width:534px;height:401px" width="534" height="401" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1024x768.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/P1000384-Photo-credit-Lars-Johansson-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 534px) 100vw, 534px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Photos by Lars Johansson</figcaption></figure></div>


Abade has also been careful to shun the economic thirst-trap of the easy business loan, and has instead instituted a solidarity fund within the company to allow employees to contribute to a monthly kitty accessible when any of the team need to borrow without risk. Staff are able to access these contributions when they leave, a structure that encourages an understanding of fiscal responsibility based on mutuality and trust.



“You have to sit down with your people and be candid,” she says. “I run my business like a family, so they see the struggles.



When you have a conversation like that with people, they understand where you’re coming from.”



Mindful of the steady international growth in upcycling, and the resultant price increase in scrap material and off-cuts, Abade is now gradually shifting her focus towards printed textile production, using quality cotton fabric made by women and sourced from Tanzania. She believes her prints will open up a new niche demand for a local twist on an African fashion stalwart, with Blackfly aiming to become the leading Kenyan producer of the traditional Indonesian batik prints embraced with such joyful ubiquity in the west of the continent.



“I have a big responsibility to produce a technique that when seen anywhere in the world, people will say, ‘This is Kenyan batik, without a doubt’. Because you can’t train people if you don’t have a specific technique,” she explains.



“I’m experimenting in order to find something uniquely Kenyan – painting more than stamping; using pastel and muted colors, but in very strong combinations. I think the market is hungry for something new. And big brands are starting to really think about organic cottons, so everybody’s giving themselves a timeline to work with. We have to be ready for that timeline.”



As the North American skies clear, Abade looks ahead with hope, the creative fire still burning in her belly. “I have to remember that regardless, I’m an artist, before a businessperson. And working with artists, I think, is a nightmare,” she laughs. “But as long as it feels good – that’s what we’re going to do.”

P1000559 Photo credit Lars Johansson

Upcycling On The Fly: Fashion Forward In Kenya

Aisha Shehu is using fashion to shift the narrative of the Fulani people in Nigeria.



Aisha Shehu is on a mission to show the world the beauty of the Fulani culture as a modern Fulani woman.



The cultural detail and distinctive colors of the traditional outfits of the Fulani tribe always resonated with Shehu. Both her parents were civil servants so she credits her entrepreneurial spark to her creative and artistic side, which was a constant during her formative years.



However, her path to becoming the next emerging fashion trendsetter was an unconventional one.



The Fulani tribe is a nomadic tribe of herders who migrate with their cattle in search of land rich with grass and water. Where previously determined by the change in seasons, more recently,



climate change and desertification have led Fulani herdsmen to migrate to lands belonging to sedentary farmers, reportedly resulting in violent clashes between the two.



Despite this negative narrative of the Fulani in the media, Shehu, the founder of luxury clothing brand BABAYO, is looking to change that through the power of fashion. Born in Lagos to Fulani parents from Gombe in north-eastern Nigeria, Shehu grew up wearing traditional Fulani clothing during major public holidays such as Nigeria’s Independence Day. However, knowing her parents would not pay for her to attend fashion school, Shehu opted to go to business school in France instead. She also did a one-year degree in fashion while there. The plan was to start her own fashion business and put the skills she had acquired abroad to work.



“My mother told me to give her my CV so I could start looking for jobs. It took me long to create one not because it was hard to do, but because I did not want to return to the oil and gas sector and a nine-to-five job,” recalls Shehu.



Rather than look for employment, she came up with another plan. With the savings she accumulated teaching English to children in France, as well as money she made from her work experience in the oil and gas sector, Shehu decided to rent a space for her



business, buy her first sewing machine and hire a tailor.



For Shehu, ground zero involved coasting through the fashion business with no real strategy in mind



in terms of how to differentiate herself from the competition. She dabbled in casual, formal and bridal couture to make ends meet. The real turning point for the brand happened by default and not by design.



“Two years ago, when I was going through my closet with my sister, we found our old Fulani outfits that we wore as kids – the traditional ones. I remember saying how weird it was that we could not wear this all the time. And that is when the conversation started. From there, we wanted to find a way to make it modern, accessible and functional.” Before Shehu embarked on the new brand direction, she ran the idea by a few 



people. “They were like, am I sure this is the right time because of the backlash in the media?”



For Shehu, the answer was a resounding yes. The only way forward was to showcase the beauty of her culture.



And just like that, things began to take off. BABAYO began to form its own identity. The outfits became a hit and very soon, Shehu was designing variations of her latest creations, infused with other cultural elements.



The turning point came about through social media.



In 2021, she was contacted by Lagos Fashion Week, Nigeria’s top fashion event, on Instagram.



“I came home and got an invitation for the next emerging designers and people to look out for, and I was blown away because I didn’t know anyone.”



That invitation was for a digital show. The following year, Shehu got invited again but, this time, she was on the runway.



“I got called again! For a small and unknown brand like us to do a runway show was a big deal because you are walking alongside other established brands who have been around for years. I got to do that for Lagos Fashion Week; I took a bow on stage and that was a breakthrough moment for the brand.”



Since 2017, Shehu has increased her client base organically, with customers ordering her pieces from all over the world, including Qatar, Japan and Australia. She has also made it to the top 12 out of 400 designers to be accepted into the fashion accelerator program created by the African Development Bank. The long-term vision of BABAYO is to become a dominant brand in the luxury fashion sector. But the heart of it will always be the cultural heritage of the Fulani.

narrative

Sartorial Diplomacy: Shifting The Narrative, One Outfit At A Time In Nigeria

Despite the public roasting Levi’s took for flirting with AI, smaller clothing sellers who model their own products online maintain a growing interest in replacing themselves with the computer-generated kind.



On Tracy Porter’s&nbsp;clothing site, it’s all Tracy Porter.



Thin, blonde and 5-foot-10, the 55-year-old entrepreneur poses in each and every one of her designs. Her husband uses his iPhone to snap pictures, which they often take on the wildflower-strewn bluffs overlooking the beach 15 minutes from their home in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, before uploading them to their e-commerce site, The Porter Collective. There, you can see Porter in her striped midi dress, in her multicolor crocheted cardigan and in her black-and-white rattan visor.



Porter said she’s been searching for ways to replace herself as a model, not only to lighten the load but to bring some diversity to the site. Humans, however, are prohibitively expensive. So she’s been testing a new artificial-intelligence service from Israeli startup&nbsp;<a href="https://botika.io/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Botika</a>. She said the images look so realistic that when she showed her sons, they told her she was out of a job.



“I’m actually excited about that. I don’t want to be our model anymore,” Porter said with a laugh.



After Levi’s endured a scorching backlash in March for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.levistrauss.com/2023/03/22/lsco-partners-with-lalaland-ai/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">its plan</a>&nbsp;to bring more diversity to the site with AI-generated models – critics flayed the company, which had 2022 sales of $6.2 billion, for not simply hiring more humans – it would be no surprise if big clothing retailers have gotten skittish about using, or admitting they use, nonhuman models. That same public disapproval hasn’t yet extended to the many mom-and-pop clothing shops, whose budgets, like Tracy Porter’s, would collapse under the costs of professional hair, makeup and photography – even without inflation, rising borrowing costs and a recession that feels as if it’s been looming forever.



Services like Botika let brands easily display their clothing on various (computer-generated) fashion models. However, they are still working to add more ages, body shapes and ethnicities.BOTIKA



“In the current economy, customers are mostly looking to optimize costs,” said Eran Dagan, cofounder and CEO of Botika, which caters to small businesses and plans to start subscriptions for its AI model service at just $15 a month. It’s preparing to launch on Shopify and has a waiting list of over 1,000 customers. Dagan said Botika has gotten interest from sellers on resale platforms like Poshmark and Depop, where entrepreneurs typically photograph clothing on themselves and crop out their heads.



Another company in the space,&nbsp;<a href="https://lalaland.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lalaland</a>&nbsp;— which is still set to power Levi’s attempt to go AI — said its recent growth has been driven mainly by small and medium-sized businesses. While the company declined to disclose revenue figures, cofounder and CEO Michael Musandu said business has picked up significantly over the last eight months and sales have grown by eight- or nine-fold.



“We’re helping emerging brands that are just starting out and have zero budgets, or low budgets, to actually plan photoshoots,” said Musandu. “We really help level the playing field by representing the underdog.”



The fact remains that for everyone, photoshoots are pricey, and while shoppers are increasingly demanding that clothes be shown on a variety of models, no brand has an unlimited budget to do that. Tracy Porter used to hire outside photographers, models and hair and makeup stylists to shoot her products, but it would cost $5,500 every time she brought them out. If she outsourced photography for her multimillion-dollar business today, she estimates it would set her back $500,000 a year. “It’s just too much money,” she said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“What I’d like to do is take an image and see it on different sizes. Small, medium and large. But I don’t want to have to hire all the people to do that.”Tracy Porter, small business owner
</blockquote>



Which is how Porter landed on modeling the clothes herself. However, that makes it difficult for shoppers with a different body shape or ethnicity to get a sense for how her products would look on them. “What I’d like to do is take an image and see it on different sizes. Small, medium and large. But I don’t want to have to hire all the people to do that,” said Porter. “Because there will be no profit left in our company and we’ll have to close.”



Another small business owner, Jacob Flores, is looking forward to more easily finding models that reflect his customer base. The 50-year-old former web designer from San Antonio, whose online store Blissfully Brand sells skintight dresses, skater skirts and bell bottoms in colorful prints inspired by fashion from the 1960s and 1970s, has a lot of customers in their 40s and 50s. But many models for hire tend to be much younger.



Flores recently started using Lalaland, where he can hand-select digital models from a library, dress them in his products and upload the images to his site without leaving the house. For $300 a month, he gets 50 images, enabling him to display more of his clothing on models much faster. He was previously limited to doing photoshoots four times a year, where he would pay $900 to get as many shots of a few models in 20 outfits as he could in two hours.



Now he plans to do photoshoots just once or twice a year on location so he can show his clothing at the beach or on a city street. He also sees AI being helpful with social media ads, allowing him to target certain audiences with tailored images.



Richard Evans, founder of wellness startup Juro Miru, also opted to include some shots on AI models to launch his new e-commerce site, in addition to images of clothing laid on a flat surface.



Startup Juro Miru displays some of its products on AI models.SCREENSHOT OF JURO MIRU WEBSITE



As for shoppers, it can be impossible for them to tell whether they’re looking at a real or fake model. There are no clear rules for disclosure, although companies are beginning to think about it. TikTok is reportedly working on a tool that will give creators a way to say whether they’ve used generative AI.



“When you’re presenting an image that could easily be mistaken for an actual person, I think you should disclose that it’s a computer-generated image,” said David Danks, a professor at the University of California, San Diego whose research explores the ethical issues around artificial intelligence.



Porter is wrestling with this question, among others. “How would you even know? Do we have to say? Are we supposed to say? There are a lot of questions,” she said. Her friends seem afraid of AI and have told her they think it will put models out of work. “It’s a constant dinner table conversation for us.”



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/"></a>By Lauren Debter, Forbes Staff

Pacific Islander woman wearing artificial technology mask

Clothing Entrepreneurs Can’t Wait To Fire Themselves As Models And Hire The AI Kind Instead

Move over Lagos and Cape Town. It’s Durban’s turn to dazzle the continent’s fashion fraternity.



DURBAN, IN THE KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province of South Africa, is known for many things – the sun, the sea and the food, but certainly not for its fashion. But that landscape seems to be changing now, and the coastal town seems to be making a splash on fashion runways. 



Notwithstanding that the four-day Durban Fashion Fair is becoming an item on the country’s annual social itinerary, the city’s small but growing fashion industry is getting a fresh makeover. The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee has also now found a team in Durban to design athletic apparel for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics (if it happens as planned). 



“I think at the moment [Durban is] also [in] the fashion race and we’re also getting there in terms of other parts of the country with a bigger fashion scene,” says model Khwezi Ngwenya Ntombela. “The programs here are helping our designers-intraining get better and step up their game, so each crop gets better with each year. So, as the fashion changes, they change along with it and enhance their skills, which will eventually make Durban a fashion capital.”



Ntombela has been modeling since 2006, and is now the owner of Mold Models, a school training young aspirants to sashay down the ramp. 



“I love the idea of training, teaching and transferring my knowledge. Even when I watch a [fashion] show, I enjoy watching models who know what they are doing and are confident, and knowing that I [had] a part [to play] in that…”she gushes. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-2-1024x683.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-51676" width="597" height="398" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-2-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-2-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-2-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-2-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-2-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 597px) 100vw, 597px" /><figcaption>Swastika Maney and Sanyukta Singh</figcaption></figure></div>



Mother and daughter, Swastika Maney and Sanyukta Singh, both designers and joint owners of House of S and S the Label in KZN, have been in the business long enough to agree. We meet them at a café in Pietermaritzburg in KZN, where they are seated, dressed in blue and red and with a pink handbag perched on the table. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-5-683x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-51682" width="355" height="532" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-5-683x1024.jpeg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-5-200x300.jpeg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-5-768x1152.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-5-1024x1536.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-5-1365x2048.jpeg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Picture-5-scaled.jpeg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 355px) 100vw, 355px" /><figcaption>Designs from House of S</figcaption></figure></div>



The cheerful colors belong to the world they come from – the world of design and dress-making. At their boutique, they curate and retail Indo-Western clothing with pieces imported from India, as Maney explains: “Every piece has been personally selected by me on my travels to India; the textures, colors and styles have all been chosen to make sure I am catering to the taste of all my clients.” 



Since its inception in 2011, the brands have grown and the duo say they have styled the likes of South African celebrities such as Shashi Naidoo and Carishma Basday. 



“I initially started out with 10 pieces on a table in my living room and here we are, 10 years later, in our boutique in Durban selling to clients in-store and shipping to the rest of the world,” adds Maney. 



Having initially begun as House of S, and catering to a mature, more conservative demographic, the brand has since expanded its offerings. S the Label, which Singh has been working on since the age of 17, has its own youthful stamp. Prior to the pandemic, the pair had begun to export their clothes across Africa and have since resumed this with the easing of the lockdown. 



Now at the cusp of launching their own designs and label, they have no intention of slowing down. No stranger to the fashion business, Durban-based Neil Ramautar has also styled celebrities and the well-heeled in the city. 



“When I was younger, my biggest fear was being homeless. I did not have a good childhood and I knew I had to do something… This career happened by accident and I took it and ran with it and here we are today,” says Ramautar, who rose from a “promotional spray boy” for a beauty brand to star stylist. Having done makeup for the likes of names such as Khanyi Mbau and Kajal Bagwandeen locally, he attests to also having made up international singer Miguel and Bollywood star, Bipasha Basu. 



When discussing the fashion scene in Durban, he believes it is the blended culture that makes it unique. “We are happy being in our little world here. We’re not really concerned about the rest of the country, but the rest of the country doesn’t have anything on our culture down here, we have our own little fashion world,” he reflects. 



With a number of projects in the pipeline, a makeup line to his name and a waiting list that could stretch from one end of the Durban coastline to the other, Ramautar is clearly in vogue. Also a part of the Durban fashion industry is Shezaad Ally, in demand for his slick bridal shoots and fashion photography. 



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:29% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/15966139_1246616548757183_1944824179383789545_n-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-51670 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/15966139_1246616548757183_1944824179383789545_n-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/15966139_1246616548757183_1944824179383789545_n-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/15966139_1246616548757183_1944824179383789545_n-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/15966139_1246616548757183_1944824179383789545_n-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/15966139_1246616548757183_1944824179383789545_n-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/15966139_1246616548757183_1944824179383789545_n-2048x2048.jpg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
We have our own little fashion world [in Durban]. – Neil Ramautar
</div></div>



Having started out with photography as a hobby during a gap year from law school, six years later, his pastime has become his profession and the gap year has become a permanent mode of existence for Ally who also sees photography as a way to relieve the pressures of life. His photoshoots embody Durban’s unique culture as he explains: “There are so many different cultural backgrounds in Durban. Within each culture, you will find that they all have their own unique style to them. And that’s what I love. I love working on new ideas, trying new concepts within people’s different styles.” 



The Durban Fashion Fair is a platform for upcoming designers as well, some of who are making waves in the sunny beach town. We speak to Mbali Zulu, who is part of the team that has developed athletic apparel for the Olympics and Paralympics. 



Having studied fashion design at the Durban University of Technology, she previously worked for some big retailers in South Africa as a fashion buyer. Currently, she is one of the eight rising star designers to showcase at this year’s Vodacom Durban July. 



“My favorite so far has been being part of the Durban Fashion Fair mentorship program which opened doors to be a part of this amazing opportunity to design the opening ceremony outfits for the South African athletic team,” says Zulu. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SDR_9652-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-51659" width="362" height="543" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SDR_9652-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SDR_9652-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SDR_9652-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SDR_9652-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SDR_9652-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SDR_9652-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 362px) 100vw, 362px" /><figcaption>DFF Mentees Show 2020</figcaption></figure></div>



And on being inspired by Durban? 



“Durban fashion has its own unique handwriting. It’s inspired by the mixture of culture… My design signature is inspired by Africa and my culture mixed with a hint of Indian fusion. I love the bold colors from both cultures, the beautiful embroidery on the Indian garment and the stunning Africa beads from the Zulu traditional garment.” 



For the Tokyo Games, the team has designed ready to-wear outfits for the athletes. 



“We designed a stunning print which represents South Africa. We used natural fabrics. We wanted the design to represent every South African… The designs were inspired by the athletes. When they briefed us, they told us about their dream from a young age to represent their country in the Olympics. Nelson Mandela also had a dream to unite South Africa through sport. The design embodies unity and the love we have for our country,” says Zulu. 



Ruth Unwin, who began as a graphic designer before she was drawn in by the allure and appeal of the fashion industry, is also a part of the team designing for the Olympics and Paralympics, working at Mr Price Sport and together with Gavin Maxwell, the head designer of men’s apparel at the brand.



“It has been a fantastic and exciting journey for us as a team and brand…,” they exude. “Durban is unique for the climate, coastal weather and sea, sun and sand. These elements served as inspiration for the warm colors, lightweight textured fabric in easy wearing silhouettes that also suggest the ease of the lifestyle we have here.” 



Designer Nompumelelo Mimi Mjadu also concurs: “Durban’s history and the surroundings… there’s so many stories to tell. Durban has developed a lot of innovative designers through the years… Durban has more undiscovered talent.”



 



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile" style="grid-template-columns:38% auto"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/131416226_1815986198554972_8775049496683180348_n-1024x683.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-51656 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/131416226_1815986198554972_8775049496683180348_n-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/131416226_1815986198554972_8775049496683180348_n-300x200.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/131416226_1815986198554972_8775049496683180348_n-768x512.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/131416226_1815986198554972_8775049496683180348_n-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/131416226_1815986198554972_8775049496683180348_n-2048x1366.jpeg 2048w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">My design signature is inspired by Africa and my culture mixed with a hint of Indian fusion. I love the bold colors from both cultures, the beautiful embroidery on the Indian garment and the stunning Africa beads from the Zulu traditional garment. – Mbali Zulu</blockquote>
</div></div>



And with that, the city is also developing a new and evolving breed of fashionistas and style mavens capturing the imagination and interest of Africa’s growing creative economy.

Zwandyy

Fashion On The Coast: Durban’s Sartorial Moves

Anjali Borkhataria is trying to change the narrative of fashion in Tanzania with a local brand aimed at everyone.



BY INAARA GANGJI



IT WAS ONE OF THOSE RARE OCCASIONS when bold neon colors, oversized white outdoor workwear and bright uncoordinated prints made their way on to the ramps of the annual Swahili Fashion Week in Tanzania. Local fashion designer, Anjali Borkhataria’s brand, EK AN TIK, its name inspired by Hindu scriptures, was a breath of fresh air in an industry that has been assumed to be set in its ways. 



“I believe African fashion is not limited to the printed patterns or kitenge, but we have so much to work with… there can definitely be more diverse design, but still have that African signature,” says Borkhataria to FORBES AFRICA. Borkhataria won Innovative Designer of the Year at this year’s fashion week and her brand has been worn by celebrities across the region and the African continent including Kenyan musician Tanasha Donna, Tanzanian celebrity Romy Jons and singer Mbosso, and has also appeared in a music video by popular Tanzanian singer Diamond Platnumz, featuring Congolese singer Koffi Olomide. 



But Borkhataria believes her brand is not made only for celebrities. Her first collection is workwear inspired by regular businessmen, electricians, and construction industry workers. It’s also unisex, oversized, and flowing. And while she does not prefer comparing herself to other designers in the region because creativity is not a competition for her, she believes her designs inspired by local street culture set her apart. 



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MIKE-DEO-2-1-819x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-50422" width="338" height="422" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MIKE-DEO-2-1-819x1024.jpg 819w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MIKE-DEO-2-1-240x300.jpg 240w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MIKE-DEO-2-1-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MIKE-DEO-2-1-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MIKE-DEO-2-1-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MIKE-DEO-2-1.jpg 2000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 338px) 100vw, 338px" /></figure></div>



“Because, life happens on the streets, the streets influence me more than anything. So, I try to imply that into my design,” says the 23-year-old who has been a designer for the last three years. However, despite having studied at the Cape Town College of Fashion Design in South Africa, when it comes to the creative process, she does not believe in doing things in one way or the other. 



Her second collection showcased at the latest edition of the Swahili Fashion Week was inspired by games. Titled ‘GameScape’, the inspiration for it came from her father, who sells cars, batteries, and tires. It was also inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic as everybody sat at home and played games. “I don’t know what my creative process looks like because sometimes it’s a movie, sometimes it’s a piece of art, sometimes it’s nothing,” she exudes.



The tight timeframes involved in creating collections hinder the creative process too, with usually only five weeks between conception and production. She is not a fan of sketching either, as she goes with flow, not following a typical or organized process. This saves her time and sets realistic expectations, in her opinion.



Borkhataria also does all her production in-house and on her own. And she hopes that the independent career path she has taken by returning home to Tanzania from South Africa, inspires other young people in her country, no matter their background, to also be able to pursue fashion if they are so keen. 



She also credits her success to her supportive parents. All of this may make it seem like fashion is fun, and it is for her, but the industry is not free of challenges, she opines. She thinks brands create so many collections every year, but there aren’t enough people who can afford to wear them. “So, I wish fashion would go back a little bit. Today, everybody thinks that they know what fashion is, but they don’t know the main essence. For instance, I like music, but it’s not like I’m going to actually make it. So, I don’t like it when people buy a dress from H&amp;M for cheap and they think, ‘I know what fashion is’… I definitely want to change that,” she adds.



This is the reason why she wants high-quality local brands to reach the most people and hopes to have a local store of her own, as she currently works and sells from home. With all these aspirations, and while being a young, South Asian-origin female designer, doing everything on her own is not easy, she is humbled and inspired by being able to create fashion at home in Tanzania. 



“It is challenging but like in one way, it has made me very open minded. Because we are surrounded with mixed backgrounds… I think that has made me very open to different types of people. It just signifies there is hope,” she says, with faith in her craft and optimism for the world.

pic supplied

Inspiration From Where Life Happens

COMPILED BY: BONTLEFEELA MOGOYE PHOTOGRAPHY: MOTLABANA MONNAKGOTLA ART DIRECTION: LUCY NKOSI



THE HIGH-END LUXURY MARKET HAS NO DOUBT TAKEN A BACK SEAT DURING THE PANDEMIC, BUT FINE AESTHETICS CAN TRAVEL ACROSS TIME, SPACE AND BOUNDARIES. HERE ARE A FEW WAYS TO REVISIT OPULENCE AND LUXURY OVER THE HOLIDAY SEASON IN THE COMFORT OF YOUR HOME.



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49434 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1761-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
Lungile Radu (South African media personality)



Printed suit R6,500 ($422,10); Imprint ZA



Kefilwe Mabote (A digital creator and luxury lifestyle enthusiast in South Africa)



Blue and black printed loungewear and Corset belt; both designed by Gert-Johan Coetzee (Price on request)
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<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49427" width="360" height="539" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1470-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px" /></figure></div>



Black tuxedo jacket R2,800 ($181,83), Black pants R1,050 ($68,19) and Shirt R695 ($45,13), all Carducci Slip-on shoes R3,500 ($227,29)&#8211; Relevance for Men from Africa Rise, Sandton, Johannesburg



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49429" width="434" height="650" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1534-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 434px) 100vw, 434px" /></figure></div>



Black two-piece: Pants R7,437 ($482,95) Top R8,437 ($547,89) all Taibo Bacar Cars supplied by: Zebra Square Gallery Hyde Park Furniture by Ligne Roset (www.lignerosetsa.co.za)



<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49431 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1631-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
Over the years, I’ve invested in a few beautifully designed and custom-fitted suits that have stoodthetestoftime. Theseare significant purchases that I can still appreciate the value of.



– Lungile Radu



Nguni Cow Suit R6,800 ($441,58) By Imprint Za
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<div class="wp-block-media-text alignwide has-media-on-the-right is-stacked-on-mobile"><figure class="wp-block-media-text__media"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-49438 size-full" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/IMG_1859-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /></figure><div class="wp-block-media-text__content">
I have noted that luxury is something one needs to do for oneself. Whether I shop online or in-store, the experience is the same.



– Kefilwe Mabote



Alex lime green dress R18,000 ($1168,90) Taibo Bacar
</div></div>

IMG_1694

Luxury Gift Guide: The Luxe Factor

The ‘fast’ fashion industry is responsible for abominable levels of water consumption, pollution, and waste. Enterprising entrepreneurs in South Africa are looking to natural materials and upcycling to make every-day clothing more sustainable. 



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-730x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-48498" width="313" height="439" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-730x1024.jpeg 730w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-214x300.jpeg 214w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-768x1077.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-1095x1536.jpeg 1095w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-1460x2048.jpeg 1460w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-300x421.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-600x842.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Atlas-Label-Wetsuit-3-scaled.jpeg 1825w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 313px) 100vw, 313px" /><figcaption>Atlas Label uses material that can be repaired many times over</figcaption></figure></div>



What are you wearing? Examine your outfit as you read this. Maybe a T-shirt or a trendy new dress. Denims, perhaps? Or more likely a stretchy pair of sweatpants and socks now that we&#8217;re all mostly working from home. 



‘Fast’ fashion makes clothes-shopping more affordable but at an increasingly environmental cost. According to a 2018 United Nations report, “the global fashion industry produces 20 percent of global wastewater and 10 percent of global carbon emissions – more than all international flights and maritime shipping”. Then there’s textile dyeing, pegged as the second-largest polluter of water globally. Did you know it takes around 7,570 liters of water to create a pair of jeans?&nbsp;



Step one in sustainability: Reduce. Then reuse and recycle. One antidote to fast fashion is to shift away from seasons. Pre-pandemic, big-name brands would launch collections between four and six times year, with fashion houses like Zara reportedly introducing more than 20 different collections a year.&nbsp;



Cristina Rovere is the founder of environment-friendly swimwear and wetsuit brand, Atlas Label. “We do not make any seasonal collections&#8230; and we encourage everyone who owns an Atlas Label product to consider repairs as a first option. We believe in making better choices and in taking responsibility for what you purchase. Use it, love it, care for it. Repeat.”&nbsp;



A love for surfing (and thus the ocean) led Rovere to create wetsuits that are better for the planet. “As surfers, we see the amount of rubbish first-hand on the beach. It’s a push to start making better choices,” she tells FORBES AFRICA. Typically, wetsuits are made from a kind of rubber called neoprene, a synthetic polymer derived from petroleum, but her Japanese-inspired suits use limestone neoprene (rubber derived from crushed limestone) instead. “It has incredible technical properties and can be repaired many times over.”  



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-default"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="683" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-2-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48499" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-2-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-2-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-2-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-2-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48505" width="346" height="518" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HempLove-1-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 346px) 100vw, 346px" /><figcaption>HempLove uses natural materials for its garments.</figcaption></figure></div>



Generally speaking, natural materials are better for the environment, but it’s not a straightforward argument. Cotton, for example, is not a prominent pollutant but has downsides in terms of labor and land. Lorè Botha co-founded HempLove in April 2019. “Based on our research, hemp requires ten times less the amount of water and half the amount of land than cotton. Our slow collection entails that all the garments and textiles are dyed using plant waste sourced from farmers and restaurants in South Africa.”&nbsp;



Such natural materials are not new on the fashion scene, but they are increasingly being used from head to toe. Launched in 2014 by a family of milliners, Simon and Mary hats are made from 100% wool felt and hemp. (They are also part of a tree-planting project with South African reforestation organization, Greenpop and use rainwater to save roughly 30,000 liters per month). 



Laduma Ngxokolo has also been using local mohair, and merino wool since 2012 for luxury knitwear brand, Maxhosa Africa, and Davie Hutchison founded bamboo-blended Sexy Socks in 2014. “Sexy Socks was, I think, one of the first social enterprise brands in the South African market, and we have always been eco-conscious.” The colorful socks are not only made from sustainable and biodegradable materials but also have social impact. For every pair of Sexy Socks bought, one goes to a child in need. 



When natural materials aren&#8217;t used, clothing clogs the system. According to American Vogue, “an estimated 50 million tonnes of clothing is discarded every year, and most of it will not biodegrade in a landfill”.&nbsp;



Makhosazane Rosa Sekgwama, has come up with an innovative way to combat such fashion waste. “We use recycled materials from the local clothing industry that would otherwise be discarded. Local factory offcuts become the yarn that we use to crochet all our products,” Sekgwama tells FORBES AFRICA.&nbsp;



Her brand, ROSA Handmade in SA, made The V&amp;A Waterfront&#8217;s ‘100 Beautiful Things’ list and consists of woven rugs, lovingly-made baby baskets and handbags. However, being green comes with its challenges. &nbsp;



“We rely on yarn wholesalers who directly source from the clothing factories making upscaling impossible as there is a limit of each color we get from them. We also avoid dyeing materials ourselves, which would enable us to make more products of the same color range but pose an environmental hazard.”&nbsp;



Back in Cape Town, growing interest in Atlas Label wetsuits led Rovere to investigate a more affordable offering for ocean-lovers. “Our swimwear is made of Econyl, regenerated Italian nylon made from post-consumer waste, including ghost fishing nets removed from our oceans. Econyl is a certified product, and we have a signed communications agreement with them, which keeps us in constant contact and sets us apart from many other businesses.”&nbsp; &nbsp;



Nombuso Nomzamo Khanyile from Afrikan Passions Designs tells FORBES AFRICA that footwear also springs from waste. “We upcycle discarded car tyres and use them as sandal soles, reducing car tyres as environmental pollutants. The majority of our customers are attracted to us mainly because we upcycle.”



Indeed, this kind of thinking is no longer niche. Sekgwama says: “The competition is high. Both new and existing retailers are changing to be more eco-friendly, attract discerning consumer attention and gain preference. The scourge of Covid-19 [also] opened more eyes to the need to support local businesses and authentic products manufactured locally.”&nbsp;



Rovere agrees and says “South Africa is still catching up, but with the internet being such an open asset to everyone, the global movement for consumerism has definitely shifted towards more conscious purchases. We even see changes in the companies that used to create fast fashion, so overall knowledge around sustainability is increasing”. &nbsp;



South African Fashion Week (SAFW) has 600 local designers on the database, according to the event’s founder and director Lucilla Booyzen. “There are a lot of grey areas around sustainability for our SA Fashion Designers. None of them, as far as I know, are fully sustainable, as it is very difficult for any company to be fully sustainable.”&nbsp;



Zippers, underwires, buttons and packaging can all hamper sustainability efforts, but has there been a rise in eco-conscious clothing on the runways? “Yes, definitely,” Booyzen says. “This season, all the designers at SAFW are showing what we call slow fashion collections based on up-cycling, recycling and no waste&#8221;.&nbsp;



Likewise, the winter collections of more accessible household brands prove traditional retailers are catching on too. Both K-Way and Woolworths revamped their fashionable puffer jackets, filling them with recycled plastic fibers instead of duck down. Buyers at K-Way note, however, that the adoption rate to sustainable wear in South Africa is generally lower than the rest of the world and recycled synthetic has had a slow start.&nbsp;



Conscious fashion has become increasingly important in South African retail, and waste reduction on a large scale would help to close the loop and create a better circular economy. If local fashion can become more sustainable and effectively reduce the load on South African landfills, all the better. Especially given that the City of Johannesburg’s Environmental, Infrastructure and Services estimate the city has three years before landfill sites reach full capacity.&nbsp;



“Once you dip into sustainability, it becomes a part of your life,” says Rovere, likening the movement to a continuous journey. “It&#8217;s about making better choices. One item of sustainable clothing might just lead to better choices at the supermarket. It leaves a lasting impact on your purchasing decisions going forward.”



By Melanie van Zyl

AfrikanPassionDesigns_NiamhWalsh-Vorster-1

Conscious Couture: Swimwear From Fishing Nets And Soles From Tyres

Japanese designer Kenzo Takada has died at age 81 after battling Covid-19-related complications. The designer passed away on Sunday evening at the American Hospital, near Paris, France.



Tributes have poured in for the designer, who made his debut in 1970 and over the years grew Kenzo into a globally recognized brand and fashion house.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20world's%20ultimate,biggest%20luxury%20brand%20acquisition%20ever.">Bernard Arnault</a>, LVMH chairman, said in a statement that he was “very sad to learn about his passing,” expressing sympathy for Takada’s family and friends, adding, “Kenzo Takada has, from the 1970s, infused into fashion a tone of poetic lightness and sweet freedom, which inspired many designers after him. In this fresh and spontaneous spirit, he also durably renewed the world of perfume.”



LVMH acquired Kenzo in an $80 million deal in August 1993, the year of its acquisition. Kenzo’s sales hit $144 million, according to United Press International. Takada left the group in 1999.



Jonathan Bouchet Manheim, CEO of K-3, Takada’s new lifestyle brand launched in 2020, said, “Kenzo Takada was incredibly creative; with a stroke of genius, he imagined a new artistic and colorful story combining East and West—his native Japan and his life in Paris,” he said in an emailed statement to Forbes.



Adding, “I had the chance to work alongside him for many years, always in awe, admiring his curiosity and his open-mindedness. He seemed quiet and shy at first, but he was full of humor.



“He was generous and always knew how to look after the people close to his heart. He had a zest for life . . . Kenzo Takada was the epitome of the art of living.”



<h4 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">The Rise of Kenzo</h4>



Born in Himeji, Japan, in 1939, Takada studied literature before dropping out and becoming one of the first male students at Bunka Fashion College, Tokyo, according to a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/04/style/kenzo-takada-dead.html?smtyp=cur&amp;smid=tw-nytimes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times</a>&nbsp;profile. He told the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/a5eea252-140e-11e9-a168-d45595ad076d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Financial Times</a>&nbsp;in 2019, “I was once told that it was impossible for a Japanese man to work in the fashion industry in Paris . . . Men weren’t allowed into design schools. Being creative was not accepted in Japanese society in the 1950s. And more than anything, my parents opposed the idea of me working in fashion.”



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1209066807-1024x682.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48251" width="303" height="202" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1209066807-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1209066807-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1209066807-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1209066807-1536x1023.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1209066807-2048x1364.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-1209066807-600x399.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 303px) 100vw, 303px" /><figcaption> (Photo by Anthony Ghnassia/Getty Images For Roger Vivier)</figcaption></figure></div>



His first fashion house was impishly named “Jungle Jap” and was formed after his flat was leveled to make way for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, the compensation from which allowed him to travel to Paris. After first selling sketches to other designers, he launched his first Paris boutique, later rebranding the fashion label as Kenzo in New York in 1976.



Takada described his own early style as floral patterns, kimonos and textiles, and drawing on the “strong presence of nature in Japanese art,” he told the&nbsp;FT.



As the house grew and grew, Kenzo launched a men’s collection in 1983, followed by a fragrance line in 1988. Kenzo sold the business to LVMH in 1993 following shifts in the industry, and the death of his partner, Xavier de Castella, in 1990, “I decided to sell the company for various reasons . . . It was becoming more commercial. Fashion was changing, the pace was changing,” he told the&nbsp;FT, staying on as designer but stepping away amicably in 1999.



<h4 class="has-text-align-center wp-block-heading">Tributes</h4>



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-908467420-scaled-e1602146194776-1024x936.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48252" width="412" height="376" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-908467420-scaled-e1602146194776-1024x936.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-908467420-scaled-e1602146194776-300x274.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-908467420-scaled-e1602146194776-768x702.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-908467420-scaled-e1602146194776-1536x1405.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-908467420-scaled-e1602146194776-600x549.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-908467420-scaled-e1602146194776.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 412px) 100vw, 412px" /><figcaption>Kenzo Takada and Naomi Campbell attend the &#8220;Azzedine Alaia : Je Suis Couturier&#8221; Exhibition as part of Paris Fashion Week. (Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure></div>



Supermodel Naomi Campbell said on Instagram, “So sad to hear of your loss today . . . will always remember your smile and humble demeanor . . . and positivity you shined on us all.” 



Billionaire <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/francois-pinault/#190b8d374d20">François-Henri Pinault</a>, described Takada as “one of the creative spirits who contributed to making Paris the capital of fashion. His fashion resembled him: at the crossroads of cultures, creative, joyful and generous,” <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/designer-luxury/kenzo-takada-dies-at-81-of-covid-related-complications-1234621609/" target="_blank">WWD</a> reported yesterday.



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Felipe Oliveira Baptista, artistic director at Kenzo, said, “It is with great sadness that I have learned the passing away of Mr. Kenzo Takada. His amazing energy, kindness and talent were contagious. His kindred spirit will live forever. Rest in peace, Master.”&nbsp;



Takada’s death falls as Paris prepares for Fashion Week 2020 amid a tightening of lockdown measures as the number of Covid cases soars again in France.



-By David Dawkins, Forbes Staff

FRANCE-JAPAN-FASHION-KENZO-PORTRAIT-BLACK AND WHITE

Kenzo Takada Dies After Covid-19 Battle–Bernard Arnault Mourns Designer’s ‘Fresh And Spontaneous Spirit’

The small-towner started off as a model, then ventured into fashion, constructing Afro-urban clothing the unconventional way. Lebogang Makgale is a creative on a mission.



In Johannesburg’s cultural and creative nerve center that is Newtown, a chic district in the inner city with bustling clubs, cafés and art galleries, Lebogang Makgale’s fashion studio is an apt adornment.



The curious, vibrant young passers-by outside his door often stop to inspect his garments but to the 27-year-old fashionista, the uncontested center-piece in his bright blue studio is a hard-working sewing machine he bought for $34. It stands as a symbol of hope that gave fresh impetus to his life – and continues to be his career’s biggest investment, carefully-positioned in a corner enveloped by photographs from his first fashion collection. 



The space is otherwise strewn with clothes, fabric and accounting books. He is at ease with each of these objects. After all, his journey started studying accountancy at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), a venerable higher learning institution located close to where he is today.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Long before that, in high school, the Soweto-born creative artiste called himself ‘MacGale’, a play on his surname, which he artfully inscribed on classroom desks. The name stuck.



It must have been ordained. Today, that’s also the name of his fashion brand.



“A bookworm, shy and not very social” in school, fortunately, his interest in sport and athletics ensured he always had a coterie of friends and followers. But he also had another quality that endeared him to them – his interest in fashion and his distinct sartorial sense.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



&nbsp;He wanted to be a sports star, and his parents wanted him to become a chartered accountant, but this was the only talent – like his self-styled sobriquet – that stuck, and carried him through his growing years.



&nbsp;He pursued an extended diploma in accounting, but Makgale felt out of place; accounting was dull and gloomy in comparison with the myriad colors of the fashion world.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="683" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-683x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-47849" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-scaled-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-scaled-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/IMG_1145-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px" /></figure>



“About seven months into the course, a classmate told me that I am tall and had style and advised me to take on modeling. I took it seriously and joined an agency. They [the agencies] told me I am not tall enough, not masculine enough, but I persisted despite everything being shut out,” recalls Makgale when we meet him one warm January afternoon in Johennesburg.



Floyd Manotoano, known in South Africa’s emancipated fashion circuit as Floyd Avenue and winner of the GQ Scouting Menswear Competition in 2017, gave Makgale the modeling platform, and he didn’t look back.



His trips to designers’ studios for fittings and fashion shows only grew his innate love for couture.



“I was still enrolled at UJ but not going to class, I was going to studio. My transport fare and lunch money were used to buy fabric. We always had a plan showcasing across Johannesburg and always buying fabric. A friend also taught me how to thread a sewing machine. I was also introduced to styling and started consulting to make outfits for matric dances,” says Makgale.&nbsp;



The networking and mingling in the fashion world helped. He thereby met a tailor who sold him his sewing machine for $34. Now, all he needed was to perfect his craft.&nbsp;



He turned to technology, and characteristically for a youngster in the digital age, sought the help of online tutorials to learn to sew. He debuted with an ethnic Ndebele print collection.



In 2013, reality kicked in. His father asked for his varsity results. He had to break the news to him. That he was not keen on accounting, and he had been bunking classes. His concerned father asked him: “There are a lot of designers, how are you going to make money?”



He had enrolled at a fashion school with little knowledge and experience of the industry. But he was beginning to make an impression with his clothes.



Two years in, Makgale dropped out to focus on the business side of fashion. Being blogged about and being known on the streets wasn’t paying the bills; he had to make ends meet.



“I disappeared and disconnected from the street to focus on the brand, MacGale. I had to start from scratch. I had to create a client base, a target market. I slowly established myself as a professional fashion designer. That’s when the true identity of the brand evolved, in 2015,” he says.



During his off-grid period, he worked on a collection for BackToTheCity, South Africa’s biggest annual hip-hop and street culture festival. 2015 was a definitive year for him; he tailored an African-inspired street wear collection and incorporated it with plastic.



Soon after, fashion photographer Chris Saunders approached him. He was shooting for an international magazine profiling the coolest kids in Johannesburg. Saunders selected Makgale and that became part of a showcase at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam.



&nbsp;Business started trickling in; Makgale was making matric dance suits, whilst polishing his designing skills.



“There was a time when that was the only kind of work I would be getting. It wasn’t fun, but it made business sense because the matric boys would refer everyone to me,” he recalls.



In 2015, he was also introduced to cycling by a long-time friend and athlete. His original love for sport was stoked. But there again, his love for fashion prevailed.



“Cycling equipment and kits are expensive. The color combinations didn’t make sense to me, so I made [comfortable clothes] I could cycle in that would also look cool. I started with jackets with pockets at the back, then shorts with tights that go underneath. I then decided to make a fashionable active wear collection,” he says.



About a year later, this got the attention of Moja Nation, an advertising agency working on the ‘Let Wonder Out’ campaign for Oreo cookies. This was going to be Makgale’s first corporate gig.



Despite the challenges he faced, Oreo loved his work and asked him to work on their second campaign. This time, he was more experienced and able to execute the whole order by himself.



He worked on it whilst helping Floyd Avenue with his 2017 South Africa Fashion Week collection.



“I worked with Lebo when I won the GQ award. I’ve known him for a long time; I even made his matric dance suit that was inspired by Kanye West. I’ve seen his growth; he has invested in his craft. I knew him as a student at UJ. Years later, we started meeting at fashion events and started working together,” says Floyd Avenue.



In 2017, Makgale was also part of a TV show, 100 Percent Youth, on SABC1, which documented his sourcing and creation processes.



“I came across striped fabric and fell in love with it. I made a striped jacket live on camera. Little did I know that was the beginning of an era, I started my stripe journey,” he recalls.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The stripes inspired his tailored suits, not of the traditional kind, but also motivated by waistcoats, and women’s wear like corsets and dungarees. This was his third official collection.&nbsp;



After 100 Percent Youth was aired, he started receiving more orders for his suits and he was soon appearing in season two of SABC’s fashion reality TV show Raw Silk. He made it to the top five and that too got him traction and customers.



By this point, he had developed working relationships with hip and happening local celebrities such as Khetsiwe Morgan, also known as DJ Doowap. Most of the women’s garments that Makgale creates are for her. He had never seen himself crafting womenswear until Raw Silk happened.



“I don’t like shopping at the mall; I’m about creating things that no one wears, so I was trying to find a tailor for the longest time. My boyfriend told me about Lebo’s collection, I met him and he is super-easy to work with. He is super-honest and tells me when something isn’t going to work. The first garment he made for me was for the Metro FM Awards in 2017, he made a three-piece garment using Swati fabric,” says DJ Doowap.



Makgale has expanded his business since and is working on costume design for local and international advertising campaigns. His journey started in an accounting classroom. But today, he is a passionate fashion entrepreneur on his way up. He may not be balancing books, but he is certainly on the money.

IMG_1130

The $34 Investment That Fashioned A Career

Tshego Manche grew up in Klerksdorp and found sartorial visibility in big city Johannesburg.



Born in Klerksdorp, a small town in the North West Province of South Africa, Tshego Manche was raised in a business-oriented family.



Her parents owned a salon and cosmetic store in the township for over 20 years before venturing into other businesses.



“Coming from that environment, I already knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur,” says the 30-year-old fashionista today. “I aimed for what I am passionate about. Growing up,&nbsp;I always said I am&nbsp;a small town girl with big city dreams.”



Manche, known for her sartorial sense among friends, studied for a BCom degree in Marketing Management and whilst in varsity, worked at Pulsate, a fashion store in Africa’s richest square mile, Sandton, in Johannesburg.



“Two weeks after being employed, the owner flew down and said he had to meet me as there was a spike in sales. I was never afraid to approach people and tell them about the store, and also interact with customers. I then learned customer and marketing skills, and developed a deeper love for fashion which led me to want to start my own brand,” says Manche.



La Manche clothing was registered in early 2012 and was ready to put the all the theory into practice. Manche dropped out of varsity during her third year and went on to start selling on a small scale to friends and family, and she opened her physical store end of 2012.



Her mother contributed immensely to her startup and invested in clothing, packaging, and also paid for her flights and accommodation to look for stock in China and Turkey. The brand started growing. In 2014, she employed three workers, teamed up with stylists and magazine editors and the brand grew with sales doubling, she says.



“In 2015, we hit our million mark [offering local and international clothing]. From 2016 onwards, we hit a decline in sales as new entrants in the market came; rental for my space was also high and the location remote. In 2017, I started 100% custom-making; growth had been slow yet steady and I had nine employees by the end of 2019. I decided to close my physical store in April 2019 and stay with one employee.&nbsp;Now in 2020, we are focusing solely on the online space we have rebranded and restructured.”



The coronavirus also had an impact on business but this has taught her that digitizing the business is the best way to go. She also took to social media, encouraging other entrepreneurs during the tough times.



“I invited different people from different industries to come talk to people and engage about entrepreneurship every Monday for 10 weeks. We had one livestream with over 10,000 viewers,” says Manche.



Who would have thought a small town girl would encourage entrepreneurs in a big city to keep pushing ahead in the hard times.

Tshego Manche

The Small-Towner With Big Dreams For African Fashion

Lydia Mbayo went from an engineering job to making some sharp-suited statements in the fashion business.



How does someone go from being an IT engineer to becoming a modeling agent and entrepreneur with a suit collection?



Lydia Mbayo, 39, who is all of that, says it simply: “I will never let anything stand in my way, if it’s the right time for me to do something, then it’s the right time. I will follow my dreams.”



After a stint as a modeling agent that saw her in-house talent grace global campaigns, Mbayo, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and now based in South Africa, has launched a collection of ladies’ suits and jackets called La Jaqueta.



“I was always in love with fashion. I have always liked to dress up. I always wanted to be a model. And I always had that entrepreneurship spirit,” she says.



Her new brand seeks to empower women through clothing and help build their confidence and self-esteem.



“I love suits, and I feel confident in them, so I wanted people to be inspired by that so that when they wear my suits, they feel confident too,” Mbayo says.



By her own admission, she is not a designer, but she hand-picks the fabric and adds her own personal flair to it, getting a lot of help from a local ‘cut, make, trim’ factory that assists in manufacturing her “dream collection”.



So how did a young woman who came to South Africa from Kinshasa in the DRC in 2001 to study IT engineering at the University of Johannesburg come to represent models?



Her degree led to her working as at an IT engineer in Johannesburg, but there was something missing. It was not in line with her true passion.



“They used to call me the IT Noami Campbell because I was clever and did well at university, meanwhile, being a Naomi Campbell,” she laughs.



Mbayo aspired to take underprivileged young women from small townships and turn them into international models who could one day represent the biggest names in the fashion industry.



“That was my dream, you get a girl from Hammanskraal and ask her, ‘do you know Paris’? She says to me, ‘mama, what’s that’ and then, I would say to her ‘come sit, let’s Google’ and I would show her the Eiffel Tower and say to her, ‘yeah, we are going here one day’.” &nbsp;



So, in 2013, she represented her first model, who went on to win a local pageant. In 2015, she started a modeling agency, FabulousDotCom. And two years later, she says some of her models were well on their way to attaining global fame.



“You know, in the beginning, no one wanted to book my clients, and I had no idea what I was doing. Everything I learned, I learned from Google – Google was my teacher,” Mbayo laughs. “I even resigned from my job as an IT engineer, and that was a big risk, but it was worth it.”



With the pandemic still at its peak, Mbayo’s brand will be available online for now.



“When it&#8217;s rain, you have a good time. You cannot have a good time if there is no rain. So when you have those challenges, those difficulties, those are just the rain and then the good time is coming,” Mbayo says.



“The coronavirus is not stopping my dream, so it should not stop yours.”

The Entrepreneur In Fashion Who Learned From Google

I love fashion. It’s not just part of my job as an international model, it’s a way of expressing myself and my cultural heritage. I am inspired and excited by the creativity of designers and the variety of fashion choices we can have available to us. Africa has many talented designers who are being recognized on a global scale. Just recently, African designer Kenneth Ize shared the exciting news that he will be collaborating with the Karl Lagerfeld fashion house to co-create the spring 2021 capsule collection.



Yet, when it comes to sustainability, the fashion industry has a lot of work to do. The fast fashion industry that originated in the West has accelerated fashion’s negative environmental and social impact. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the fashion industry uses more energy than the aviation and shipping industries put together. It also states that the industry produces about 20% of global waste water and 85% of textiles end up in landfills or are incinerated when most of these materials could be re-used. Add to this the fact that fashion is also one of the biggest employers of forced labor, and the picture is pretty grim.



Now transport this to Africa, which is already experiencing the impact of climate change and though many African countries are pioneering the fight against plastic – some have made plastic bags illegal for example – we still have plenty to do to ensure we build sustainable businesses, especially in the fashion industry.



For me, sustainability is ultimately about trying to maintain our human existence and we can’t sit back and leave it to others, and this brings me to Malaika.



Malaika is the grassroots non-profit I founded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Its mission is to empower a community of people through education and health programs. It now comprises a school for over 346 girls and a community center that provides education and sport for development programs to 5,000 youth and adults, and we built and refurbished 20 wells that serve over 30,000 people with clean water. We have built Malaika over the past 13 years with sustainability in mind, and to us, it means using minimal resources and using them well.



Our IT suite, school and community center are powered by solar energy. In 2017, we set up our small farm where we teach organic farming and the food produced supplies the school canteen. We engage the community in a big clean-up of the village each month and our students plant trees and learn about the environment. Education is key to empowering people but it’s also key to changing our environmental impact. We are producing the leaders of tomorrow and we want them to be equipped to make an even bigger positive impact on our global carbon footprint than we have.



What can we do to reduce the effects of climate change? Firstly, I believe we, as consumers, need to hold more businesses to account. I try to do modeling campaigns with brands that are ethical and care about giving back because sustainability, to me, is also about the people who make our clothes. According to CARE International, an organization fighting global poverty, 75% of garment sector workers are women and the Covid-19 pandemic has led to brands cancelling big orders with suppliers leading to many workers losing jobs.



So, what can we as individuals do? We need to change the way we shop and ask more questions about how our favorite brands are producing their clothes. We need to take the time to investigate who is making them, what their working conditions are, and what they get paid. When I buy clothing or accessories, I ensure they are items I love and can see how they will fit in with the other clothes I own. HURR is the world’s leading fashion rental platform and I use it to rent clothes for events so I can wear a one-off piece or luxury brand item without buying it. A website I always check is eco-age.com for the latest news on global supply chains, artisanal brands, community projects and suggestions on which brands to shop. Finally, take a look at the United Nation’s ActNow climate action campaign for practical tips on how you can make a difference.



Start today. It takes time and effort to change our habits but every step we take towards sustainability will help change the world for future generations.



– By Noella Coursaris Musunka; an international model, philanthropist and founder of Malaika, a grassroots non-profit in the DRC.

Neolla at Malaika

Re-Use Clothes, Buy Ethically And Build Sustainability Into  The Fashion Industry

Katungulu Mwendwa has deconstructed fashion and has a positive, defiant and edgy take on the environmental crises compounded by the global clothing industry.



A sleek saffron kaftan over Pollock-spattered silk trousers; the obsidian fins of a night-black evening dress; a sashed, punky, persimmon hoody from the future streets of Nairobi. These are the irresistible stories in Kenyan designer Katungulu Mwendwa’s startling KATUSH fashion brand label.



The child of a psychologist and an architect, Mwendwa grew up in a nurturing creative environment that introduced her to an eclectic skillset of creative tools.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-1024x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44952" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-scaled-300x300.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-scaled-100x100.jpg 100w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-scaled-600x600.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-150x150.jpg 150w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/RED-SKIRT-1-80x80.jpg 80w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



“My dad used to take us to work with him,” she says. “We would actually draft a lot, as an experiment. In fashion, you have to create the pattern, the master bloc, and it requires a level of geometry to develop. With the human form, you have to remove suppression at different angles, to create volumes and shapes. So working with my dad definitely made me more confident in that. He did want me to be an architect. So now I’m like, ‘look! I’m an architect for clothing!’”



Emboldened by her triumph in the reality TV contest Catwalk Kenya in 2007, Mwendwa pursued her bachelor’s degree at the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, United Kingdom.&nbsp;



“By the time I graduated, I had a better understanding of who and what the key players and roles were,” she says. “I was determined to come back to Kenya to create a business that I could then offer not just to the local consumer, but to a global market.”



Her second major break came with an invitation to present at Gen Art’s ‘Fresh Faces in Fashion’ show at New York Fashion Week in 2012. She arrived “by myself with two suitcases, running around New York lost and confused,” after two sleepless months of frantic sewing.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="768" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-768x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44953" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-scaled-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-scaled-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-1536x2048.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/work-in-progress-2-by-Osborne-Macharia-scaled.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" /></figure>



“It was exciting, but extremely nerve-wracking,” she says. “I remember some people saying, ‘but your stuff doesn’t really look African…’ They were waiting for something with more color, with more prints, and I had this post-apocalyptic, nomadic thing going on! And I struggled with that at the beginning – the whole concept of being told I’m not African enough – and I used to wonder what that meant. These days, I’m like, no, that’s not my battle. And now I’m designing what I like to make.”



She cites the essential impact of opportunities such as the HEVA investment fund, which supports entrepreneurship in the East African creative sector.



“I was very grateful to them,” she says, “for at least being patient and interested in those of us who would not necessarily get financial support, because we are considered such a high-risk business.” She now involves local artisanal groups, such as brass and aluminium casters, in her creative projects, and is sensitive to the challenges facing cottage industries whose traditional skills often lie outside the purview of a ruthless, churning, unpredictable industry.



“I’m curious about the evolution of culture, and practices and aesthetics relevant to our day-to-day lives,” she says (see her ‘Dinka Translation’ collection, which transfuses an ancient South Sudanese iconography into the clipped geometric lines of the boardroom or the cocktail party). “Retaining specific cultural practices, as opposed to copying and pasting, is critical in understanding how to manoeuvre through some of the challenges we face.”



She says that much more can and should be done to bring these local industries into the fold. “These artisans don’t have access to markets, and because they can be so detached from their direct consumer here in Nairobi, it becomes easier for someone to exploit them,” she says.



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“I’ve always felt it’s the role of designers in the region to work closely with them, and then by extension, the market will create further demand.”



The edgy Afro-futurism of her work feels like a positive, defiant repost to the environmental crises compounded by the global clothing industry, a bloated leviathan which dumps almost two hundred tonnes of mitumba (second hand clothing) into East African markets every year. The Kenyan mitumba sector is a complex, controversial beast in its own right, creating millions of jobs while simultaneously suffocating regional productivity.



“Brands like myself cannot compete with clothing that is here for free,” Mwendwa says.



“There are a few designers creating upcycled clothing, which to me is extremely admirable. But I don’t know how good it is for us as a people, because it limits our ability to compete on an equal level. It has killed our textile sector, our own industry, and therefore we aren’t even able to source locally.”



She is optimistic, but cautious, about the future; light on her feet about the direction she may pursue.



“I’m going to tell more stories. I want to better understand how to communicate with a consumer that feels the way I feel,” she says.&nbsp; “I know it’s probably a niche consumer, but I also know they exist, in different pockets of the globe. I think we’re all everyday superheroes: that person that brings you a cup of coffee in the morning, might just say hi, might just be a stranger who stopped and waited for you to cross the road. That’s what informs my collection. And I want to share that with people.”



By Alastair Hagger

Katungulu Mwendwa

The Architect In Clothing Who Wants To Tell More Stories

After months of requests, the hip-hop superstar shared financial records, revealing details about his wildly popular Yeezy sneaker empire — and his fixation on outside validation.



When last we checked in with Kanye West, the mercurial hip-hop superstar-turned-footwear magnate, I was tiptoeing through a parking lot crop circle composed of hundreds of pairs of his Yeezy sneakers. “I’m not a numbers guy,” he explained ten months ago. “To ask me to somehow translate this to numbers is to ask your grandmother exactly what the recipe of the cake was.”



There’s only one number that West cares about. A billion, as in dollars. And he cares&nbsp;a lot.



When we featured West on the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2019/07/09/kanyes-second-coming-inside-the-billion-dollar-yeezy-empire/">cover</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;last summer, delving into his incredible success with Yeezy, he seemed pleased at first. His world-famous wife, Kim Kardashian West, even&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/KimKardashian/status/1148660167254274048?s=20" target="_blank">tweeted</a>&nbsp;her congratulations, to the positive affirmations of 32,300 of their closest Twitter friends.But without sufficient documentation on his unusual stake, versus just his word and industry guesstimates, we didn’t call him a billionaire. And that grated on him.&nbsp;As the year wore on, he protested&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/christian-genius-billionaire-kanye-west-talks-2024-presidential-candidacy-moving-yeezy-stateside-1253358" target="_blank">publicly</a>. (“I showed them a $890 million receipt, and they still didn’t say ‘billionaire,’” he told an industry panel, about something that no one at&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;remembers.) In private, he was more biting. (A “disrespectful article,” he texted this week, that was “purposely snubbing me.”)



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="783" height="1024" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kanye-on-forbes-783x1024.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44642" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kanye-on-forbes-783x1024.jpg 783w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kanye-on-forbes-300x392.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kanye-on-forbes-600x784.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kanye-on-forbes-229x300.jpg 229w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kanye-on-forbes-768x1004.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Kanye-on-forbes.jpg 960w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 783px) 100vw, 783px" /><figcaption>After months of requests, the hip-hop superstar shared his financial records, revealing details on his wildly popular Yeezy sneakers empire—and his own net worth. &nbsp;JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure>



When our annual&nbsp;<a href="http://www.forbes.com/billionaires">billionaires list</a>&nbsp;appeared earlier this month, again with West absent—still no documentation, and now a pandemic to boot—West again reacted with hurt and venom. “You know what you’re doing,” he texted. “You’re toying with me and I’m not finna lye [sic] down and take it anymore in Jesus name.” At one point, he texted that&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;was “purposely a part of a group of media” that was trying to suppress his self-made narrative because of his race.&nbsp;That sister-in-law Kylie Jenner did make the list also clearly stuck in his craw.



Then yesterday, a breakthrough: West directed his team to provide what we feel is an authentic numeric look into Kanye, Inc.



Three things became clear from this exercise. First, it reinforces why we put him on the cover in the first place—West, in just a few years, has created a brand that’s challenging Nike’s Air Jordan for sneaker world supremacy. It’s one of the great retail stories of the century.



Second, it reinforced that West, who claims both in words and in this paperwork that he’s worth more than $3 billion, is as overly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2015/09/29/inside-the-epic-fantasy-thats-driven-donald-trump-for-33-years/#225d05ca2037">boastful</a>&nbsp;as his political idol, President Donald Trump. Not a numbers guy? We agree.



Finally, and perhaps most critically to West, it does confirm, based on our estimates, that his stake in Yeezy indeed makes him a billionaire. A bit over $1 billion, actually.



In the process, we can now share more details about Yeezy than ever before revealed—as well as some insight into what drives this extremely creative, extremely enigmatic ten-digit artist.



Yeezy is a complicated asset. West owns 100% of it. But it’s functionally tied, at least for five-plus years based on the documents we saw, to Adidas, which produces, markets and distributes the shoes. There’s also a separate apparel division that we don’t believe makes money. Last year, our sources projected the shoes would finish 2019 with revenue north of $1.5 billion (Adidas would not comment then, or now)—per recent conversations and internal documents, we believe the final revenue number ended up closer to $1.3 billion.



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Our sources told us last year that West’s agreement calls for him to receive a royalty around 15% of Yeezy revenue from Adidas. Upon closer inspection, it appears some expenses are carved out of that slice, bringing his actual cut closer to 11%. At that rate, he would have received royalties of over $140 million from Yeezy sales last year.&nbsp;



West’s aggressive $3 billion self-appraisal is clearly based on the idea that the business is infinitely portable. It’s not. Taking Yeezy away from Adidas seems almost prohibitively cumbersome, if not contractually impossible. A safer way to value it: as a royalty stream, like music publishing or film residuals. Multiples, based on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2019/05/08/royalty-exchange-cardi-b-jay-z-beyonce-timberlake/#6fd9ea346364">services</a>&nbsp;like Royalty Exchange or in large private transactions, can be as low as three for something faddish like Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” to 17 for an evergreen asset like the Eddie Murphy film&nbsp;Trading Places.&nbsp;



A handful of experts surveyed felt West’s interest would fetch a multiple somewhere in the middle of that range, were it ever made available to outside investors. The convenience of the Adidas setup trumps publishing catalogs, where owners must actively collect payments from a complex web of sources—or outsource that labor to someone else in exchange for an administration fee. “His place in the capital stack is a preferred place to be,” says Royalty Exchange chief Matt Smith, who pegged the multiple at between 10 and 12.



Conservatively, as we typically are with such figures, a 10x multiple, applied to West’s Yeezy cut of $140 million, makes his stake worth about $1.4 billion. But that’s a private, highly illiquid $1.4 billion—our rule-of-thumb for private assets like that is to lop off at least 10%.&nbsp;That’s $1.26 billion.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/yeezy-1024x785.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-44643" width="678" height="519" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/yeezy-1024x785.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/yeezy-300x230.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/yeezy-600x460.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/yeezy-768x588.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/yeezy-1536x1177.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/yeezy.jpg 1600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 678px) 100vw, 678px" /></figure></div>



A handful of experts surveyed felt West’s interest would fetch a multiple somewhere in the middle of that range, were it ever made available to outside investors. The convenience of the Adidas setup trumps publishing catalogs, where owners must actively collect payments from a complex web of sources—or outsource that labor to someone else in exchange for an administration fee. “His place in the capital stack is a preferred place to be,” says Royalty Exchange chief Matt Smith, who pegged the multiple at between 10 and 12.



Conservatively, as we typically are with such figures, a 10x multiple, applied to West’s Yeezy cut of $140 million, makes his stake worth about $1.4 billion. But that’s a private, highly illiquid $1.4 billion—our rule-of-thumb for private assets like that is to lop off at least 10%.&nbsp;That’s $1.26 billion.



Customized real estate often sells for less than the money put in (buyers in that range tend to want their own features, versus Kanye’s Belgian plaster). If you want to start scraping, there’s $3,845,162 for “vehicles,” $297,050 for “livestocks.” Then there’s the matter of his music. Documents we reviewed show West’s G.O.O.D. label—and his own recorded music and publishing rights—to be worth at least $90 million.



We tend to look at self-appraisals somewhat skeptically.&nbsp;Aside from the music, half of all this presumably belongs to his wife, although she’s no slouch and that math goes two ways. Given the illiquidity of these myriad assets and the lack of independent backup, we’re giving all of this a 50% haircut, leaving about $125 million in assets outside of his Yeezy crown jewel.&nbsp;Then, there’s debt: Between mortgages, advances and other liabilities, we saw about $100 million that West is on the hook for.



All told, our current net worth estimate for Kanye West: $1.3 billion, which he’ll be pleased to note is $300 million more than little sister Kylie.



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The chip on West’s shoulder dates back to his early days growing up in Chicago, where teachers sometimes scolded him for sketching sneaker designs instead of doing his schoolwork. He later produced songs for Jay-Z but felt the elder mogul didn’t view him seriously as a solo act. Over the past decade, West instigated more than his share of narcissistic episodes, including a self-appointed nickname, tour and album,&nbsp;Yeezus, that never seemed to treat his savior complex with much irony. (Typical song: “I Am A God.”)



When viewed through that lens, his famous affinity for President Trump makes a lot of sense. (And it continues unabated—one text to&nbsp;Forbes’ chief content officer this week ended with “Trump 2020” and a raised fist emoji.) As does West’s net worth lobbying—an art practiced, with gusto, for decades, by Trump.



“It’s not a billion,” West texted us last night. “It’s $3.3 billion since no one at&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;knows how to count.”



For years,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2018/04/20/the-5-things-to-know-about-president-trumps-36-year-relationship-with-the-forbes-400/">Forbes&nbsp;had an informal “Trump rule”</a>—take whatever the future president insisted he was worth, divide by 3, and start honing from there. Like mentor,&nbsp;like mentee. Welcome to the ten-digit club, Kanye. You may not like our number, but you’ve joined the highest company in that regard.&nbsp;



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/">Zack O&#8217;Malley Greenburg</a>, Forbes Staff, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/hollywood-entertainment">Hollywood &amp; Entertainment</a>



Additional reporting by Randall Lane

Tag: Fashion

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