Looking back at 1997. The inauguration of SAFW. An indigenous fashion culture begins.

The 17 designers who showed at the inaugural SA Fashion Week, in 1997, became pioneers of a completely new way of viewing and engaging with fashion. For the first time, they showed integrated and comprehensive collections of their own and independent creative vision. This broke with the existing culture of design used to embellish a society event or marketing campaign with extravagant one-off pieces.

An entirely new space, physically and mentally, had been created to engage with fashion. This dared designers to exhibit their collections as works in a gallery, in the tradition of the European fashion capitals, and positioning their unique creative view at the pinnacle of an industry that could inspire a whole fashion chain. Designers would lead the way to articulate a signature fashion culture that would draw deeply on the country’s social and cultural diversity and recognise that a fashion identity is essential to express the zeitgeist of Africa, to marry the worlds, first with third, city and village, and navigate the dialectical images of modernity and tradition, popular culture and symbols of identity, and affluence and poverty. It challenged designers to build enterprises and brands.

The time had come for the South African designer to be granted status. - Excerpt from Twenty One Years of SA Fashion Week