View full report - Fibre2fashion

By establishing contacts with the Sanlam SA Fashion Week organisers, I was invited to
observe their workshops in Durban; these fora, were convened to bring together designers
and informal workers with innovative designs for the Sanlam SA Fashion Week scheduled
for July 2006. A formal interview was conducted with a local designer taking part in the
workshop, as well as an independent consultant working for the Department of Arts and
Culture who co-ordinates the informal crafters. A semi-structured interview was conducted
with a representative of the Sanlam SA Fashion Week.
All respondents noted that when they need beadwork to complement their designs, they
outsource this work either to home-based beaders or to co-ops within the informal
economy. A respondent working with the Department of Arts and Culture in collaboration
with a number of fashion designers said that her role was to close the divide in creative
thinking between the designers and the crafters - or as she prefers to call them, artisans - as
the skills of these women is “beyond craft as a hobby” (Interview, 18/6/06b).
The respondent said that the initiative of linking designers with the artisans is vital, and she
hopes that it will “elevate craft and these skills to a new level.” She said that it was
imperative that the women working with the fashion designers receive due recognition for
their input through fully annotated labelling that identifies the artisan individually. She
maintains that there should be a policy of full transparency when it comes to traditional
craft: “As a consumer, I should be able to trace the value or production chain in respect to
a product that claims to have been made in South Africa by local artisans.”
A representative of SA Fashion Week, Francis Andrew, referring to the project of designers
and informal workers working together (Interview, 18/6/06c) said: “We are bringing
humanness to the designs; not only are we creating an exciting new range of designs, but
we are supporting poverty alleviation.” The informant stressed that fundamental to this
exercise “is that we market and promote the concept correctly and encourage South
African consumers to buy into the project; in so doing, they can individually contribute to
the upliftment of people in the informal economy.” The vision of this programme is to
“nurture an appreciation of local fashion in the minds of the South African consumer …
and to develop the growth and business potential of the industry”.
The respondent working with the Department of Arts and Culture (Interview, 18/6/06b)
argued that if the design industry, and the clothing industry as a whole, intend engaging
authentically with the informal economy, and utilising the abundance of skills and
innovation inherent in these artisans, such a process requires monitoring and evaluation.
She had observed an increase in beading and African art-forms being integrated into
87