Fashion heads will congregate in Midrand next week for this year’s installment of the South African Fashion Week, the first physical gathering since the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020.
The year promises 20 fashion veterans and newbies to showcase their artwork for the Spring/Summer 22.
The designers include de Villiers of the Isabel de Villiers Clothing, Ntando Ngwenya, founder of the Ntando XV brand, and Mikhile du Plessis, founder of Mekay Designs.
In a Meet The Designers event, De Villiers announced that she was celebrating a decade in the fashion industry, and ready to set the runway ablaze with the new African-inspired textiles.
Isabel de Villiers Clothing is well known for producing clothes inspired by the diverse shapes of the female body, raging between sizes, 32 and 48.
De Villiers will showcase The Sijwa Project and Malinki this year.
As part of her journey to celebrating the milestone, she visited Namibian women in their villages to promote the women’s empowerment event by passing on her talent to fellow females.
“I went to the Namibian villages, visiting women and teaching them how to sew so that they could also have something to do and learn to make a living out of this skill. I left some fabrics with them for some hand embroidery, and when I got the fabrics back I couldn’t wait to show them off,” said De Villiers.
The excited fashion designer said she was happy to see that these women were able to activate their love for fashion, designing, and sewing – and was happy to have their fabric shown on the big stage of fashion in South Africa.
Not to be outdone, Ngwenya’s designing skills are adept at merging conservative and post-modern techniques to create distinctively clothing.
He said his collection, titled Project 1.1, simply meaning the first of many to come, would serve as an urban exploration with an eye to the future of fashion.
The augmented reality developer said his vision was rather focused on the future to predict what the generation in 2030 would prefer to wear – from fabric to the end product.
“We are trying to rethink the future considering what the customer will be looking for in 2030. We are not only trying to accommodate the now, we should be prepared for the future. “We do not capture the essence of fashion only, but also the imagination,” said the futuristic
designer.
The newbie designer in the industry, Du Plessis, could not hide the excitement when she was finally granted her chance to talk about her brand.
She will showcase her designs against the other four designers at the Talent Search to be hosted by Maps Maponyane on April 24.
Designers of South African Fashion Week (SAFW) will use their own pop and romance-inspired fabric, organic fabrics. They are focused on adding a fresh take to old garments to create minimal waste.
The rising star is focused on ready-to-wear fashion that can also be worn in a formal setting.
Du Plessis collection is called Aikaterini. It tells the story of a young girl evolving through life’s stages to womanhood.
“We strive to create a lifestyle of creativity and to add reason to the quality of life through our designs,” she said.
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