"This year's festival is about so much more than the fashion. It's about designers understanding that you have to compete with the design market and not just on prices to get local support. People have realised that instead of complaining about imports, they need to get more proactive in how the product is delivered to the public."
The festivities of the Cape Town Fashion Festival will run over six weeks. Key stakeholders from government, business and fashion will speak at the launch today at the Rex Trueform clothing factory, which is also coupled with the unveiling of designer winter fashion ranges.
This will be followed by public fashion show 'City Catwalk' at the Castle on Saturday, 18 March, to which the public is invited to lend their support to South African brands, while being introduced to world-class locally manufactured designs. A winter wonderland fashion expo will take place over the Easter weekend and a Workers Photographic Exhibition on May 1 anchors the finale of the festival.
Says Ebrahim Patel, general secretary of Sactwu "The industry has been through a difficult time, yet with the marriage of design, innovation and manufacturing, we can grow local volumes." The 100 000 strong Sactwu - the biggest union in the clothing, textile and leather industry - is the initiator of the festival, which is supported by Proudly South African, the dti, the Western Cape Provincial Government and the City of Cape Town, among others.
The Cape Town Fashion Festival, now in its fifth year, is South Africa's biggest sectoral promotion of local products and was launched in 2002 with the aim of establishing Cape Town as a global fashion capital and promoting local design and fashion. It is also a concerted effort to act against retrenchments and keep people in jobs by ensuring consistent local demand.
