June 13, 2003
By Lucille Davie
MOSAIC stitches running up the pavements, garment patterns on street poles and threaded colour gateways are to mark the exciting, new-look fashion district in downtown Johannesburg.
Mayor Amos Masondo recently announced the commencement of the public upgrade of the fashion district.
The face-lift, to be complete by mid-July, involves demarcating the area with 11-metre high gateways that look like colourful fabric threaded through the street poles that will light up at night. These will be complemented with signage consisting of 48 large steel garment patterns erected on street poles. And on the pavements will be three different stitch patterns, cut into the paving tiles and filed with mosaic tiles.
The pavements will be further transformed with benches with inlaid mosaic stitch patterns, and trees in a part of town that is particularly bare of greenery.
The district takes up 20 blocks - End Street in the east, Von Wielligh Street in the west, Market Street in the south and Kerk Street in the north, and is a colourful part of town with shops spilling out their merchandise onto pavements. The northern section of the district has several Art Deco residential blocks, but it is otherwise largely an industrial area with textile factories and clothing shops.
You'll find anything from racks of jackets and tables of slippers to strung-up dresses and shirts on the pavements. Also on the pavements are women and men with sewing machines and huge bags of cushion stuffing, making their products in the sun.
The fashion district has been in the eastern part of the CBD for over half a century, with tailors and seamstresses working from its rather dreary buildings until the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the local industry hit the doldrums.
There are several reasons why the industry took a dive: globalisation and the dumping of big runs of garments from Asia, and the higher cost of labour and manufacturing in Johannesburg compared to the cheaper operations in Durban and Cape Town.
Revival
But in the last two years it's found its feet again: factories have opened up again as smaller, more efficient operations, and most importantly, they've now found a more secure, niche market, and there's plenty of those: ethnic African designs, which are becoming more and more popular and can't be produced by Asian sweatshops because they're very individualistic; small runs for burial societies, choirs or school uniforms are other examples.
And the area is certainly buzzing: there's around 500 tailors and seamstresses operating from this part of town, either as individual operators or as small factory productions, says businessman Rees Mann, who many believe can take a large measure of credit for the revival in the fashion district.
He's been involved in the industry since 1981, following in his father's footsteps - fresh from completing his apprenticeship in Europe as a tailor, he arrived in Pritchard Street in 1948, and described the area as "crammed floors with hundreds of women frenetically sewing, the hustle and bustle of the streets and clothes hanging on fashion trolleys being pushed energetically across the roads from sweat shops to wholesalers to retailers".
His father eventually had his own business: "Mannettes, manufacturers of ladies' coats, suits and dresses".
But by 1992 the area was quiet. Rees saw an opportunity in the depressed conditions: he travelled around, buying sewing machines and other equipment in bulk, selling them to the informal manufacturers who were emerging from the downturn.
And he saw a niche market in garment accessories. In 1994 he opened the Johannesburg Sewing Centre at 109 Pritchard Street, which he says is the biggest garment accessories supplier in the country. It's not unusual for him to order a million metres of ribbon. He has over 7 000 styles of buttons and 500 thread colours.
He's quite happy to supply micro businesses in the district with accessories in small quantities at reasonable prices which normally only manufacturers would offer. He also supplies dress patterns in six different languages, empowering more people to learn skills and set up their own businesses.
"My consumer base extends into Africa, right up to Senegal," he says.
This outlet was complemented by opening three more stores: a pleating store called Pleat It; a bridal hire and accessories store called Mama Rose's Bridal Boutique, which hires out up to 16 gowns a week; and a sewing machine repairs and spares store, Singer/Brother Superstore.
SewAfrica Training Centre
But perhaps his most enduring contribution to reviving the industry and the district is the establishment of the SewAfrica Training Centre in the same building, last year.
It serves to give training to the informal fashion trade, improving their existing skills and introducing them to new ideas, and to learn the basics of design and illustration. Lectures are given by 10 final year Fashion Design and Clothing Management students from Wits Technikon.
And to enhance these skills further Mann has called in final year CIDA students to offer basic business management skills. CIDA is South Africa's first almost-free university, taking promising students from disadvantaged situations from around the country, and offering them a four-year business administration degree.
Mann has 60 full-time students enrolled at the Centre, and plans to push that figure to 100 next year. The centre has accreditation from the long-established City & Guilds of London Art School.
"I put in half a million rand to start the Centre, which I don't expect to get back. It's my social responsibility investment in the community," says Mann.
And to provide the graduates with a forum to show the industry their work, Mann has a fashion show and exhibition venue, on the basement floor of the building, called The Fashion Venue. It has a funky feel with a black ramp offset against bright cityscape murals.
And to give the graduates and other young designers an outlet for their work, in August Mann will be opening a shop called @ 109 where they can sell their garments.
To encourage student interaction Mann has opened a café on the street level, called The Fashion Café, where students from the Centre and the Technikon meet and exchange ideas, and draw on the magazines and books that Mann has left on the Café shelves.
One of the Centre's graduates is Mohamed Desai, 43, who did a one-year course and has opened a small boutique called Out of Africa Fashions, two blocks from the Centre in Market Street, selling his own ethnic designs. His father manufactured garments in Lenasia, which he was involved in. He says: "I felt there was an opening for traditional garments, so I went for a refresher course at the Centre, bought four industrial machines, and now produce my garments in the shop."
His customers are 95% local, and include professional women like company directors and lawyers. He opened his shop in February and most of his business has come by word of mouth. He gets his fabrics from the district or from Durban, a major fabric manufacturing centre. He sells ethnic jewellery too, some of it imported from southern Africa.
He's planning to expand to Bank City in the CBD and to Braamfontein.
Clive Rundle
And Mann has managed to persuade top designer Clive Rundle to move into the district. Rundle, whose label was well-established by the mid-1980s and is known for his avant-garde couture, took 500 metres of factory space in 2001. But what's exciting about the district is that it represents a good deal of Africa - there's designers from Ivory Coast, Ghana, even as far as Senegal.
One of these is Soro Lenikpele, 30, from Ivory Coast, who operates from a small room on the 3rd floor of a building in Troy Street. Dressed stylishly in a pale-blue linen jacket and leopard skin waistcoat, he's been in Johannesburg since 1997 and in the men's fashion business for 13 years. His is a one-man business and he imports his fabrics from Ivory Coast. He supplies outfits for most of the men in the South African TV soapies.
Funding for the upgrade has come from two principal sources: the Ford Foundation and the City of Johannesburg through the Johannesburg Development Agency, with a total investment of R2.5-million. These funds are administered by BCG-BEES, an information and referral centre servicing the industry and helping to network the small entrepreneurs working in the area. BCG helped bring in CIDA and Wits Technikon.
Mann hopes that the revamp of the district will help bring big business back into the area.
