Fashioning the future

From deep roots, Tanzanian fashion is finally blossoming. A new wave of young designers is emerging who are talented enough to gain access to the world fashion stage. What’s more, African fashion is gradually becoming lucrative as more and more Africans become affluent enough to buy designer clothes and accessories, and discerning enough to eschew obvious “status” brands such as Chanel and Gucci and go for local talent instead.

The new fashion movement in Tanzania is not about flashy consumerism – flaunting your wealth has become passé. Instead it is about quality and luxury, exquisite craftsmanship and tailoring for the older generation, and about shape, colour and exuberance for the younger generation – as well as knowing plays on stereotypical African looks. In short, it’s about looking classy or looking fresh, and East African designers excel at both these looks.

For example, Christine Mhando, operating under the name Chichia London, is an intriguing young designer who uses traditional East African kanga fabrics and combines them with cutting edge London street fashion. Kangas are the main currency of traditional East African women’s fashion, and are steeped in symbolism – each vividly coloured kanga cloth features a proverb that can have several layers of meaning, and can often deliver strong messages to straying or lazy husbands or rival women, or act as declarations of love or hope.

The end result of Mhando’s dual inspiration is a collection of pretty but edgy dresses that draw from the best of both worlds, reflecting her Tanzanian background and UK upbringing. Such emerging success stories are helping the world to wake up to the existence of a vibrant and growing Tanzanian scene.

One up-and-coming designer is accessories wunderkind Doreen Mashika. With a range of bags, shoes and jewellery that give Prada a run for its money but also incorporate African themes and detailing, Swiss-Tanzanian Mashika is taking off fast. Yet she has chosen to base herself in the Zanzibari capital rather than a more commercial fashion destination (you can find her on Hurumzi Street, one of the twisty alleyways of Stone Town).

Why? She says that being located at the cross-winds of the old colonial trade routes is inspiring, and that Zanzibar’s small footprint and prevalent “made to order” culture are useful.

“African designers are discovering an increasing fan-base and market segment that is Africa-based, both indigenous and or naturalised, that both appreciates and celebrates their creativity and craft,” says Mashika.

“Now frame the picture so that all this takes place against the backdrop of a greater prevalence of affluent communities within African society today. The implications are that the lucrative business models once the preserve of Western arenas are presently equally viable at home. Celebrating and enabling the entrepreneurial skills of Africa's own to flourish in this way will ensure Africa's talents are increasingly harvested at home.”

It represents a good deal of progress that consumers are now snapping up local design with bold East African themes and colours. It used to be that African style (and India has traditionally suffered greatly from this too) would be adopted by the Western fashion establishment as a seasonal trend that could then be dropped when the next lot of shows came onto the calendar. To be Indian or African and to be “in” one minute and “out” the next was at best comical, and at worst demeaning. Now the new wave of African designers have seized back the initiative and are making African fashion a permanent fixture rather than a plaything of bored Western designers.

As the scars of colonialism gradually fade, a greater confidence and self-assurance is emerging in terms of what it means to be African, and also Zanzibari, or Tanzanian, or Kenyan, and this is permeating the design field. Mashika says that in the last half century, “the parental photo albums of almost any African household would have a beautiful set of portraits of African parents in almost exclusively classic European attire and accessories, down to the neatly folded pocket handkerchief for a man's suit jacket. The same albums would more likely today, carry images of the same parents, in unmistakeably bold and classically African regional attire. Perhaps the remnants of Africa's legacy of foreign rule in some parts has diminished and the consciousness of its children grown to both embrace and export the noble fabric of Africa's beauty.”

Sheria Ngowi is another designer making heads turn. His late father – “an incredibly stylish man” - was his main inspiration for his sense of fashion, and he takes the colonial clothes aesthetic that Mashika describes from family photos and remixes it so that it belongs to the young men who sport his designs. (He has stuck to designing menswear for the last couple of years, but tells Mambo that he is planning to introduce womenswear collections again soon.)

“My goal is to give all people, especially men and women of colour in Tanzania, a platform of inspiration. It is important for them to be aware of the rules of fashion, but not with an intention to follow them. Rules must always be tweaked, subverted or broken,to make for a more relaxed and personal sense of style and [so people can] develop their own fashion personalities.”

He is another designer who has opted out of the mainstream European/American route to break into fashion. He trained in the city of Bangalore in India, and most of his designes are made up there. However he intends to move back to Dar Es Salaam permanently in 2011 and to open a flagship store for his designs. He says that he has had a great response so far from international markets and sees his designs featuring at key fashion weeks soon.

Does he think there is a burgeoning Tanzanian scene? “Tanzanians are fashionable, which explains why my designs are very popular there. However, we only have a few noticeable designers because the industry isn’t big enough to accommodate more. But my advice to up-and-coming designers is don’t give up on their dreams and to be the change in our country fashion industry that all of us we want to see.”

“Fashion is definitely picking up in Tanzania, However, we’ve still got a long way to go. We need to find a way to blend in our cultural roots and modern trends, and come up with our own style. We are definitely going places though.”

Yet another designer impressing international audiences is Tanzanian but South Africa-based Anisa Mpungwe, whose label Loin Cloth and Ashes showed at Bryant Park during New York Fashion Week last year, and who also won an Elle New Talent award, which she says was her proudest moment. “It was this moment that launched my career. After that everything around me moved and changed fast. I was all over. Learning business, designing collections, showing in Sweden, meeting more industry people, hiring tailors... It was crazy.”

She is less convinced that there is a fully fledged Tanzanian fashion scene... yet. While there are plenty of East African designers emerging, she says, few are living in their home country. “For example, though Tanzania is slowly getting put on the map in fashion, I don't think there is a direct link to the country. As in ‘I'm Russian, I'm going to East Africa, I read about this designer from there, I'll pop by his or her shop and treat myself to African fashion.’ It's always the Tanzanian designer based in London or South Africa or New York."

Mpungwe adds that she doesn’t live in her home country, so is somewhat unfamiliar with the fashion scene, “but what I do know is that fashion needs to be supported more by the government and its people for people like us to succeed and represent our home at home”.

Whether you’re Tanzanian or not, living in East Africa or just on holiday, consider checking out the boxfresh new talents of these emerging designers and get ahead of the game. One day, like the man who bought a Picasso before the painter was famous, you might just find yourself in possession of a vintage masterpiece.