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Durban Designer Collection, the MTN 2006 Durban Fashion Week and the 2006 Cape
Fashion Week.
Brenda Quin (Interview: 8/7/06)
Quin is a middle-aged white woman who has been in the industry for more than 12 years.
She designs mainly haute couture and ready-to- wear women’s clothing, selling from her
three boutiques and producing in her own factory. Brenda has no formal training in fashion
design and is self-taught. She financed her factory and boutiques using some of her
investments as collateral for capital, but repaid her bank-loan as rapidly as possible. Quin
uses both local and imported fabrics and employs a total of 14 people. She does not
outsource to CMTS at all, but does use crafters in the informal sector for beadwork
requirements. She has exported her ranges to London but found that the time spent on
administration outweighed her profit margin. She took part in the 2006 Durban MTN Fashion
Week.
Iqbal Hoosain (Interview: 8/7/06)
Hoosain is a well known designer who has been in the industry for more than 20 years. He
has won SA Black Designer Awards for his menswear and has been a judge at the SABS
Designer Achiever Awards for several years. He has his own factory where he employs
seven people, making his own range and also manufacturing for other designers. He sells
his range at a number of private boutiques throughout South Africa. He studied Fashion
and Clothing Design at the Durban Institute of Technology where he has also lectured
part-time. He started his business with loans from family members, as he did not want to be
obligated to banks. He started his business during the apartheid era and believes that if he
could survive those hard years, young designers today can become a success if they are
prepared to work hard, persevere and market themselves effectively as there are more
opportunities for them now than before. He took part in the 2006 MTN Durban Fashion
Week.
8.2 Success Factors
According to Aspers, the measurement of a successful designer is difficult, as “nobody
knows the exact formula for a hit” (Aspers, 2006:809). A common theme emerges in terms
of successful design practice in the local context, which is corroborated by a world-
renowned commentator of the fashion industry, Mr. Dion Chang (Interview, 5/7/06): these
designers grew their business gradually, being willing to begin with the lowliest of means
and infrastructure, and working in relative obscurity, learning incrementally about the
business of fashion and how to maintain control over their cash-flows.
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