Business Daily (Nairobi)
Ken Anami
20 November 2007
The wave of the second edition of the Big Brother Africa- the audacious reality television show that has been blowing across Africa for the last three months finally passed after the cheeky Tanzanian, Richard, clinched the big trophy. In the next three months, DSTV will been following Catwalk Kenya, which started on Sunday, and is to go on until late February.
As a reality television show, the weekly show is a Kenyan- only 13 weeks reality fare that promises a display of artistic guts, glamour and glory. It a test of Kenya's fashion creativity and the world will be able to judge whether there is an industry worth taking note of or not. Kenyan models will also get an opportunity to showcase to the rest of the world what they can do for the fashion business.
Unlike other reality shows that have come and gone quietly, Catwalk Kenya should leave a mark . This is because, east or west, fashion is an issue that everyone must think about everyday. Surveys across the globe have revealed that everyone wants to present a certain image of themselves and will also want to wear appropriate clothes, depending on the weather and other factors. Unlike other industries, fashion designers must strive to constantly come up with new products to remain relevant. With the different media that currently rule the world, new fashion ideas are constantly flowing.
Most are from music , videos, books, and most importantly , television. Films also have a big impact on what people wear. That is why Ray-Ban, the American sunglasses brand that remains one of the best selling, recorded an upsurge in sales with the release of Hollywood's Men in Black where the sunglasses were featured.
Locally, what musicians like Nonini, Jua Kali and other fashion conscious artists endorse go on to become the accepted fashion trend. In France and some West African countries, potential buyers are highly informed fashion trends "Catwalk Kenya puts local fashion industry under a spotlight and proves that audiences in Africa can enjoy relevant local content showcasing a fascinating industry in an African country all in one show," says Patricia Mbatia, the Multichoice Kenya publicist.
She adds: "The MNet channel has had previous experience with models and fashion designers in past MNet projects and realised the great interest there is in fashion and modelling in Kenya." (3,000 girls showed up for the Face of Africa casting in 2006 in Nairobi).
"With the fashion design industry bubbling under, creating unique design labels and seeming ready to break out, there is enough within the industry to create a show around," she adds.
Even as MNet paints an optimistic picture of the local fashion industry, critics think otherwise. With an influx of cheap used clothes, high prices for the few local designs available in the market and inability of local designers to put up retail shops to distribute their creations, the industry still has a long way to go. But designers may not necessarily agree with this view that has been voiced over and again by some fashion critics.
Carol G Wahome, a fashion designer and a columnist, attributes this to mis-information on the industry.
"If you walk along any street in Nairobi, you can easily spot people wearing T-shirts designed and made in Kenya. The safari wear, and most of the mitumba that find their way back here are designed at the Export Processing Zone," she says. She says Kenyans only consider a clothing item a designer wear if it has a fancy label.
According to the 2007 economic survey, exports of footwear and clothing have been growing steadily since 2002. In 2002, Kenya exported clothing worth Sh 711,000. Last year, export of the same items had hit Sh 16.5 billion. In 2002 the country exported footwear worth Sh 1.5 billion. Five years later, there has been growth that pushed up the figure to Sh 2.2 billion last year.
"The fashion industry in Kenya has been experiencing rapid growth in the last four years. This is clearly evident in the growing number of platforms for designers to showcase their work," says Connie Aluoch, who is the fashion editor at True Love magazine. Along this growth trend, there are more local designs in the market. Kenyans especially those buying ready to wear clothes are adding some pieces of Kenyan designs to their wardrobes and more sales are happening across the boundaries.
Last week, a group of fashion designers were at the Yaya Centre to launch Kiro- an East African designers' retail outlet.
This is a first in the market as most of the designers have been operating from their bedrooms. Included in they shop are 13 designers. They include KiKo Romeo, Baccannal with sandals and men's shirts , Sylvia Owori, Maro designs and Kikoti.
Arguing that it was not sustainable, the more established retail outlets of fashion products like Woolworths are not quick to stock Kenyan products. Most of the Kenyan designers might miss this opportunity even longer.
This is because, the costs involved to sustain this might ask for a lot of money that a majority of them cannot raise.
Model and designer Gladys Sakaja says: "To create and present a seasonal collection regularly costs a pretty penny....if the designs end up on a shop shelf for long or gets put in storage for lack of buyers...it ties up the little capital most designers operate with."
Local designers are competing with ready to wear factories and even mitumba industry .
The high cost of local designs can also be blamed on high taxes on fabrics and clothing materials which stands at 35 per cent.
Like every industry, local fashion designers operate in three markets. These include made-to-measure" or haute couture, (French for high needlework), mass market and ready-to-wear clothes that are a cross between haute couture and mass market.
Most of the top Kenyan designers are concentrating on made-to wear clothes, something that has created the perception that prices of locally designed garments are too high.
In an essay, Creativity, Fashion, and Market Behaviour, Walter Santagata asserts that for fashion goods to get noticed, creativity is the core of the production chain of value.
"The quest for novelty which characterises the fashion sector's dynamics implies the formation of a sense of social belonging: people like a particular piece of apparel which is original and allows them to develop a sense of distinction, but at the same time, also allows them to develop a sense of social belonging," he says. This is what seems to inform local designers in their pricing.
To create exclusivity, designers take long hours working on a piece. They also source for the most exclusive materials for the designs to satisfy their customer's needs. This put them way ahead of most mass -produced designs that are machine generated.
Mass market
"What we are doing here in Kenya is a lot of hand work; a lot of finely produced pieces that are not commercially viable if sold to a mass market," says Ms Wahome.
Sakaja, who is a jewelry designer, observes that the local market has fully embraced them and has given them the impetus as well as the opportunity to continue to promote their work. This is because designers, like all business persons, will look for every opportunity to market their products worldwide. "Designers have bills to pay too. If the high end market is the one that is willing to buy their products, then why not?" poses Sakaja.
While the more serious fashion industry recognises textile design as a major component, most of the fabric used locally is imported after the collapse of textiles industries. The few surface designers trained in the universities are still idle, or have diverted to other tasks.
They hype with which leading fashion markets handle their marketing is non existent especially after the annual fashion week went under.
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