NOSMode designers in Senegal
NOS Nieuws•gisteren, 21:20
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Saskia Houttuin
correspondent Afrika
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Saskia Houttuin
correspondent Afrika
African fashion is booming. Walk through the streets of Lagos, Kinshasa or Nairobi and you cannot ignore the flourishing fashion industry. Ateliers, shop windows, fashion shows: the African fashion world is bigger than ever. You can also read this in the figures recently published by the UN organization UNESCO recording: the clothing and footwear industry in sub-Saharan African countries was worth almost 30 billion euros in 2020.
Africa’s middle class is growing at a staggering pace, as is its young population. Add to this the possibilities offered by social media and other technology and you understand why UNESCO expects that the demand for African design will increase by more than 40 percent in the next ten years.
Miley Cyrus as Beyoncé
Clothing from African designers is also worn more often far beyond the borders of the continent. Consider, for example, the American pop star Miley Cyrus, who had herself photographed on an airplane wearing a suit by the South African designer Thebe Magugu. Or to world star Beyoncé, who appeared in the music film Black is King wears couture from designers from Eritrea, Ivory Coast and Senegal.
Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is one of the most famous fashion hotspots on the continent. “I see a lot of progress,” says Sophie Nzinga Sy, fashion designer and founder of Dakar Fashion Hub training institute. “What I want to do here is train the new generation of African fashion designers.”
Correspondent Saskia Houttuin visited Dakar Fashion Hub:
‘Made in Africa’ is doing well, the fashion sector in particular is booming
You will find more of these types of initiatives in Senegal. Take, for example, the German cultural Goethe Institute, which offers courses for newly started designers through the ModeLab academy. At the graduation ceremony, Louheta Lendira proudly presents her creations: a rack of personalized jackets and four wicker backpacks on the table, for which she was inspired by the baskets that farmers in her home country Gabon use when they work in the fields.
“The problem is that consumers often find African design too expensive,” says Lendira. “But it is important that the local price is appreciated. Making clothes costs money: for materials, for labor.”
Learn from pineapple
African fashion is bursting with opportunities for young entrepreneurs, but there are just as many challenges. “Fabrics are often not made domestically and importing them costs a lot of money,” says Sophie Nzinga Sy. “And then there is second-hand clothing from the West that is dumped here. That makes it very difficult to be a designer here.”
Louheta Lendira wants to work more with local materials and encourages other designers to do the same: “We have so many natural materials here: bamboo, aloe vera, palm, pineapple – yes, you can make leather from pineapple. We grow cotton here, but we don’t have their own t-shirt factory, isn’t that strange? I hope that in the future we can make our own sustainable fabrics.”
2024-01-05 20:20:15
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