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editions at affordable retail prices. The capacity to bring such merchandise to the market<br />
quickly and effectively is dependent on the efficiency of the various players in this<br />
particular supply chain.<br />
Meeting the demands of fashion-conscious youth who are limited in their ability to pay<br />
high prices for designer wear, is the creation of “street-fashion”, known in France as mode<br />
de la rue; this process involves rapid innovation of contemporary designs to create a sense<br />
of style and variety at affordable prices. Emphasising the element of surprise (leading to<br />
consumer excitement), the Italian variant on the French concept of “street-fashion” is<br />
known as “flash” fashion, where limited “flash” designs are launched at staggered intervals<br />
throughout the year. The “flash” designs complement the various fashion seasons<br />
reaching the consumers either one month before or one month after a particular seasonal<br />
range (Doeringer and Crean, 2004: 18).<br />
Palmer and Clark, 2005 note that there are market opportunities for designers to utilise the<br />
second-hand market in the informal economy for their own benefit. They record how<br />
famous European fashion designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier and Dolce & Gabbana<br />
incorporate second-hand clothing into new designs. South African designers have not<br />
effectively explored this route of obtaining clothing at affordable prices and, through<br />
adaptation and embellishments, recycling them into new designs, which could be retailed<br />
at a more affordable price.<br />
South African fashion designers and the clothing industry could do well to study these<br />
European creative strategies for concepts of designer content, both to counter the rapidly<br />
global changes and competition within the global clothing industry, and to ignite<br />
consumer demand for locally designed content.<br />
Rantisi, supports this argument that South African designers collectively, in conjunction with<br />
production and retail players, need to imagine and create markets and demand for their<br />
products:<br />
Fashion, by definition, is change. Revolving around the imperative of<br />
planned obsolescence, it must continually adapt to keep in lockstep<br />
with cultural shifts in tastes, by altering the actual designs and by<br />
altering the image of the products … an overall organisation and<br />
process of control or oversight is necessary to ensure effective<br />
response to shifts in consumer preferences. [It is imperative that]<br />
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