For those in the know, the Ghanaian Fashion industry is where the true influencers of West African fashion reside. More adventurous citizens allow designers experiment with originality as obtained in more established fashion markets. It is no coincidence then that the country has the a University with a whole faculty dedicated to fashion design and garment manufacturing.
As such, we at The Other Style watch keenly the talents that score coveted spots to showcase at the Ghana Fashion and Design Week, one of the country’s largest indigenous design showcases.
Imagine our glee when we found out organisers have just released a whole trunk load of info about this year’s showcase.
Here are all the important bits from the press release.
The Ghana Fashion and Design Week 2016 will hold (as usual) in Accra, at the Luxury Labadi Beach Hotel from the 21st to the 23rd of October 2016. As usual it comes either right before, or right after the Lagos Fashion and Design Week and will most likely have an overlap of invited designers.
The Theme for this year’s event is ‘NEO AFRICA‘ which strongly suggests post-futurist or neofuturist themes and will involve a lot of conversations on a ‘new’ African Fashion and Design narrative. Designers are invited to tender applications for showcase spots from across Africa as GFDW is trying to position itself as an African Fashion Week much like the South African, Swahili and Nigerian Fashion Weeks.
With a variety of activities set from seasonal runway show displays of both established and emerging new talents, to business and education seminars, we are well encouraged to see promising talents coming through from education partner, Radford University Collegein Accra, nurtured by the dedicated Yvonne Ntiamoah, HOD Fashion Design at RUC.
What we’re particularly interested in seeing is the GFDW New Talents Spot that gives the best emerging designers in the country showcase spots and support to show at the event. Going by last year’s finalists, this will be really something.
Mark your calendars people, it’s about to go down.