An African City.
Doesn’t sound like much, but three days from now the second season of Nicole Amarteifio’s popular web series will debut on Youtube and her site. Amarteifio released the pilot episode of her show in 2014, three years in the making, about a quintet of young African returnees from Europe and America trying to juggle their professional, interpersonal and romantic lives while they acclimatize into a new cosmopolitan Ghana that is mostly facade.
There are many things interesting about An African City; its characters are outright returnees, as opposed to the confusing mix of locals with exotic accents as seen in other African shows. There is a young divorcee among the leading ladies, another first. The women are rich enough cumulatively to afford high fashion and are unafraid to spend their wealth on items traditional Africans are likely to tag frivolities. This makes for an interesting show.
But we are interested in Amarteifio’s show mostly for the parallels she herself has drawn between it and the HBO owned Sex and the City.
Sex and the City was unprecedented for it’s time. Created in 1998 as an adaptation of best selling writer Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name, the series became a fashion bible of sorts for young American women. Many argue- with good reason- that the series turned Sarah Jessica Parker, the actress who played the show’s main protagonist Carrie Bradshaw into a bonafide style icon. Her looks on the show, created by stylist Patricia Field, continues to serve as inspiration and touchstone for many young, professional twenty and thirty some things and served as a debutante party of sorts for many emerging designers.
An African City has all the right ingredients to not only lay claim to the Sex And The City throne but usurp it. Its main characters are all attractive, aesthetically and physically, and the show is on Youtube, which has the widest possible reach. The show’s target demographic is also the demographic of many emerging African fashion labels, and its message is aspirational much like many of these brands.
Fashion globally is ditching the conventional methods of advertising new collections, and seeking more organic ways of helping buyers connect with the ideologies behind the brands, such as active social media presence and customer interaction. But at the end of the day, nothing beats a role model who wears all the brands you love.
With the right plot direction and the right collaborations, the show can spin the unique opportunities it has been presented with and turn its characters into bonafide African fashion icons.
Hopefully the show’s second season will see this happen.
This is our favorite episode from the first season to get you started.