SA Fashion Week Announces Autumn/Winter 2019 Schedule
In celebration of its official coming of age, South African Fashion Week (SAFW) has announced that its Autumn/Winter 2019’s schedule will take on a particularly festive tone as it looks back over 21 years of fostering the development of a vibrant local designer culture.
In addition to the line-up of womens- and menswear collection shows and the adjacent trade exhibition, this year’s event will include a retrospective exhibition of designer garments going back to its launch in 1997 as well as the publication of a limited-edition book capturing this fashion evolution.
Running 23 – 27 October 2018 at The Protea Court Rooftop of Sandton City, the schedule comprises the following:
SAFW TRADE SHOW
This season’s SAFW Trade Show, which always runs parallel to the collections, will feature fifty carefully curated womens- and menswear as well as jewellery and accessory designer ranges. It will be open daily between 14h00 – 20h00 from 24 – 27 October.
SAFW COLLECTIONS WOMEN
DAY ONE
The womenswear collections start on the customary high note with the collections of the eight finalists of the New Talent Search. This initiative, which began as the New Designer Collections in 1998 before, has always served as a springboard for rising stars. One such notable star was David Tlale who won the award in 2003and has gone on to become one of the country’s most celebrated fashion icons.
This year’s line-up comprises four brands from Cape Town - Afrogrunge, Artclub and Friends, ODE and No Shade, Fikile Sokhulo who first caught the public’s eye in the 2017 Durban University of Technology’s Rise of the OXX show, Lisof graduate Cindy Mfabe and two Durban-based brands, Birth and Outerwear.
Equally exciting is the Woolworths Style by SA collection, which since its inception in 2013 has seen the fashion retailer promote several top local signatures at its key flagship stores. This season’s show includes Rich Mnisi, Kimberly-born Thebe Magugu, MMUSOMAXWELL, winner of the 2018 New Talent Search, Johannesburg creative Wanda Lephoto and street stylers, The Watermelon Social Club.
DAY TWO
Palesa Mokubung, who launched her Mantsho label in 2004, has always used fashion as a very personal creative expression. Her 2005 SAFW debut collection, the Three Four Five, for example, was the culmination of her resolving the trauma of a car accident earlier that year in which her and other family members were badly injured.
She explains “this jacket in particular had ten layers – it was called The Ten Collar Jacket. It talked about all the emotions I had had to go through. I wanted to make a one-layer jacket but was so bottled up and so overwhelmed that I knew there were more layers to the story. I kept adding layers to the
jacket until I felt I had captured all my emotions. Then we added more layers to the sleeves. I never shared any of this at the studio, was not something I wanted to talk about. Just wanted to create something beautiful out of the experience. This collection taught me how to translate my feelings into shapes and forms and design detail and how to give meaning to everything that I do.”
Palesa will be one of the BRICS showcasing designers this season.
Another perennial SAFW favourite who showed her first collection on this platform in 1999, is Durban- based-based Amanda Laird Cherry. She too, weaves a keen South African sensibility into her distinctive signature which can be found online at Spree and The Space Nationwide.
She believes the advent of SAFW in 1997 was critical to the growth that happened over the past 21 years.
“Designers had little esteem before SAFW. It was only after it began that it made people decide whether they were designers or just working in the industry in a commercial way. It progressed the concept of being a South African designer. It gave you a deadline and catalyst to create a collection. It was very instrumental in giving legitimacy to the industry.
Mozambican designer Shaazia Adam will make her debut at SAFW this season. A Cambridge and Istituto Marangoni graduate in A-level Art & Design and History of Art & Fashion design, she is best known for her love of couture-inspired elegance. Represented by The Fashion Agent, she will soon be available in South Africa.
Fashion forward Cape Town brand, Judith Atelier with its preference for texture and manipulation is up next.
The finale for the night is 2017 New Talent finalist, Danielle Frylinck.
DAY THREE
The beautifully finished and sublimely feminine creations of Hangwani Nengovhela’s Rubicon range have delighted many SAFW audiences as well as a host of high-profile clients including Basetsana Khumalo, Rami Chuene, Thembisa Mdoda, Loot Love, and Ayanda Thebete.
The country’s quintessential wizard of cloth and cut, Clive Rundle was one of the original designers to show at the inaugural 1997 SA Fashion Week and has delivered iconoclastic reinventions of fashion every year since then.
“Back in 1997 we thought this was just another show - we didn’t foresee that it would become this huge platform or that it would force designers to develop collections. Then, even if you had your own store you weren’t developing wholistic seasonal collections with a conceptual narrative. SAFW has changed that. Africa is now the last continent where there is something that nobody has seen in fashion. People are looking at us now. Twenty-one years ago. That is because of SAFW,” he says.
Clive’s collection this season will demonstrate all the ideas that has earned him his title as South Africa’s foremost ‘Constructionist’.
Palesa will be one of the BRICS showcasing designers this season.
Having built a thriving business on making any woman feel like a queen, Gert-Johan Coetzee will be debuting menswear on the AW19 runway. Since his first involvement with SAFW in 2010 when he launched his AW11 collection, Coetzee has consistently wowed audiences and scooped headlines for his statement-making gowns as well as his willingness to experiment with the new. His protégé model Thando Hopa, who was born with albinism, shot to fame after he first cast her in his 1998 show. She more recently achieved international acclaim as the Princess of Hearts in British Vogue editor Edward Enniful’s masterly Alice in Wonderland shoot for the prestigious Pirelli Calendar.
Appletiser returns to SAFW with an exciting intergender style collaboration with designer brands Sober, Ephymol, and Sies!Isabelle interpreting the urban chic that country’s favourite sparkling fruit drink has epitomized for generations.
Menswear designer Ephraim Molingoana is another fashion icon that has been part of SA Fashion Week’s evolution from the beginning. Remembering the early days, he says: “There was a drive, a lot of eagerness and a wanting to do things – SA was changing. We used to watch international shows, musicians, get inspired, but there was no platform to express those things. Thank goodness there was Lucilla. She had been doing shows already so naturally it just came that we needed a fashion week. But even then, many designers were just copying Yves St Laurent or Armani – I remember Lucilla – she used to tell them “you have to find your niche, you have to find yourself, find out who you are, use SA elements”. So, from the beginning she trained designers, coached them. I think it was fitting for her to introduce SA Fashion Week, there was no better person. And here we are today, 21 years later.”
SAFW COLLECTIONS MEN
DAY ONE
Inga Atelier by Inga Gubeka will be doing an installation at SAFW this season. This contemporary made in SA lifestyle brand includes backpacks, clutches, totes and laptop bags and has been making waves both here and internationally.
The respective 2018 SAFW Cape Wools Designer Challenge winning collections by womenswear brand ERRE and Carlo Gibson’s Klipa menswear label, were both inspired by the luxury and versatility of wool as a sustainable fibre.
Erre’s placement as finalists of the SAFW New Talent Search 2013 and confident signature has made them a favourite with local and international luminaries such as Terry Pheto and Princess Charlene of Monaco while Klipa brings detailed craftsmanship to its youth-inspired and easy-to-wear street style silhouettes.
Keys Fashion and RK Menswear will collaborate to deliver an interesting interplay between positive and the negative, the beautiful and not so beautiful to inform his designs.
The appetite for reinvented menswear continues unabated. Five fashion forward brands to watch are Urban Outlaw 69, Bi Parel, BLVNK, Virtue SA and RoQ Men Africa.
DAY TWO
The last day of SAFW begins with a bang as MINI Scouting Menswear winner, Kumkani Bespoke collaborates with MINI SA to ramp it up with a collection called ‘The Urban Traveller’. He is followed by Esnoko’s eclectic mix of styles and fabrics, traditional vintage and urban funk.
The SAFW Autumn/Winter 19 season ends on a high note with the 20/20 future vision of the BAKUSASA Designer collections which means ‘future’ in isiZulu. Divining the future of local fashion is exactly what this new SAFW initiative sets out to do as seven promising new creatives are giving the opportunity to walk the talk. This season’s bright new talents are Originally Kasified Clothing, Bayanda Khathini, Sipho Mbuto, Ntando XV, Otiz Seflo, Zamaswazi and NOTE Clothing.
The generosity and commitment of SAFW’s sponsors are vital. Please spread the love and acknowledge their support.
All collection pictures will be available directly after each show on SAFW Runway Gallery:
www.safwrunwaygallery.co.za
