African Designers Make Their Shanghai Fashion Week Debut
From Lagos to Nairobi, over 20 designers headed to Shanghai Fashion Week as part of a wider initiative attempting to boost African fashion in China.
Welcome back to Africa Reimagined! Shanghai Fashion Week may be over, but for some 20 African designers, this marks the beginning of a new relationship with the Chinese city.
For the first time, 22 designers from across the continent were invited to China, to present their collections at Shanghai Fashion Week. It’s an interesting move. Whenever I speak to designers, their goal is to always have a presence at the big four international fashion weeks — Paris, Milan, New York, and London — so I was curious to know why they decided to travel thousands of miles to showcase their collections at SFW.
Beyond sponsorship, designers say this presented a unique opportunity to build global brand awareness and connect with the Chinese market. It was also part of a broader initiative to strengthen relations between China and Africa further. For decades, China has become one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest bilateral trading partners, and now they are eyeing the continent’s burgeoning fashion scene.
Now that fashion week has concluded, I wanted to know if it was as rewarding as designers had hoped. I also sought to understand the long-term play, will we see African designers in Shanghai every season? To help answer these questions, I sat down with Rwanda’s Moses Turahirwa, founder of Moshions; Kenya’s Iona McCreath, founder of Kiko Romeo; and South Africa’s Nyambo Masamara, founder of Masa Mara, to learn more about this partnership.
Lastly, I want to give a quick shoutout to my friend Nuel Bans, who is hosting an event in Accra, Ghana, to discuss how industry leaders and creatives can come together to strengthen Ghana’s fashion industry. The event is on 8th April at the British Council in Accra at 4pm (European time, not African time). For my Ghanaian audience, you can join the waitlist here.
Let’s dive in!