2023-10-15 07:23:09
Kibera (Kenya) (AFP) – Overlooking the rusty tin roofs of the Kibera slum, the models parade three meters high on a platform mounted on matatus, emblematic colorful minibuses of the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
For almost six hours, interspersed with concerts including one by the famous Kenyan rapper Octopizzo, the Kibera Fashion Week collections follow one another, under the gaze of a few hundred spectators, living in the neighborhood or coming from other parts of the city.
“Kibera is full of style. (…) People don’t have the opportunity to see it because the image they have of Kibera is made up of post-election violence, prostitution, drugs… We want to show that here too, we have style, creativity,” explains the founder of this event, David Ochieng, known as Avido.
This 27-year-old fashion designer, “born and raised” in Kibera and who has collaborated with global stars like Beyoncé and Bruno Mars, intends to reveal the hidden talents of Kenya’s main slum, also one of the most populated on the continent ( 250,000 inhabitants, according to a UN estimate in 2020).
“What’s missing here are opportunities,” he sums up.
With several partners (Goethe Institut, the EU, the Nairobi Design Institute, the Masai Mbili collective, etc.), they financed and supported eleven projects, selected from 376 applications, in very varied styles, working on such diverse materials such as cotton, burlap, wool, beads and even metal.
“Empty pockets”
Among them, the post-apocalyptic style, à la “Mad Max”, of Pius Ochieng (no relation to Avido) seduced the organizers.
For two months, the 26-year-old collected computer motherboards, spark plugs, LED garlands, chains, springs and other metal parts from the streets and landfills.
Fashion designer Pius Ochieng with one of his dystopian-inspired productions, in his studio in the Kibera district of Nairobi, September 25, 2023 © LUIS TATO / AFP
He then reworked them and sewed them onto clothes at his home, a blind room of around fifteen square meters lit by three pink, green and blue neon lights, located in one of the alleys of the maze of Kibera.
The idea germinated during the “crazy” period of the Covid pandemic, explains this neophyte, accustomed to odd jobs as a waiter or “fundi” (craftsman): “But I had never been able to implement it” .
Originally from Kawangware, a working-class neighborhood in Nairobi, Helen Wanjiru has adorned her outfits with large pockets on the torso, legs, back…
“These pockets are big but they are empty. It’s an analogy: many young people in Kenya have diplomas, ideas, but they can’t find jobs because there are no opportunities and “They find one, they can’t make a living from it,” explains the 26-year-old young woman, who this year converted to fashion, her passion, following working in IT.
“Not just Paris or Milan”
Far from the hushed, sometimes stuffy style of Western haute couture fashion shows, the crowd – mostly young – cheers as the models pass by and noisily greets the designers who present themselves at the end of their collection’s show.
The event is also an opportunity for an audience of “fashionistas” to show off their eccentric outfits: here glasses covered with golden chains, there pants decorated and widened with patchwork…
A model during the main fashion show of Kibera Fashion Week, in the Kibera district of Nairobi, October 15, 2023 © LUIS TATO / AFP
In a country where second-hand clothing and foreign brands are dominant, the world of fashion and creation remains distant.
“A lot of people have only seen fashion shows on TV,” explains Avido: “We want to show them what fashion is. (…) People like our parents thought that if we were in fashion or design, you were just a tailor, or if you were a model, they might see you as a prostitute.”
Violet Omulo, a project manager in Nairobi, came to Fashion Week to “relax, have fun and discover new designers.”
“African fashion is special and is on the rise. We need to promote it with events like this so that people know that we can be creative, have new ideas, that there is no than Paris or Milan”, she explains: “Kenya, and Africa in general, have talented designers”.
© 2023 AFP
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