March 4, 2004
By Lucille Davie
FOR Joburgers keen to be seen wearing fashionable ethnic designs and fabrics, the Fashion Shack in the downtown fashion district will be opening soon, jampacked with local designers' styles.
Businessman Rees Mann, the mover and shaker behind the revitalisation of the fashion district over the past two years, says: "We'll be promoting Pan-African designs and ideas. We don't want to look continually to Europe for ideas."
The Fashion Shack was launched at a function on Sunday with several of the city's up and coming designers showing off their designs, together with established designers like Clive Rundle, and a group including those from SA Fashion Week, "people who wouldn't normally come into town".
The shack, due to open in May, will showcase the products of a "creative hub of young designers", on the ground floor of a six-storey building in a project referred to as the SewAfrica Fashion Hub, an incubator project to develop skills and relieve unemployment. The designers will be housed in the building and guided over a two-year period to develop a viable business plan with the help of Open for Business, an entrepreneurial and empowerment initiative, funded by the City of Johannesburg, Investec Bank and Technikon SA.
The project is expected to cost R614 000, of which the City will provide R250 000. The Johannesburg Development Agency is co-ordinating the project. Once up and running, the rental from each designer will sustain the project.
The idea is that customers, both local and tourists, can interact with the designers - if they like the style but would like the garment in another size or fabric, they can go upstairs and consult with the designer, giving precise specifications for what they require.
The eventual aim is to put pressure on the clothing chain stores and boutiques to come to the district, interact with the designers, and order garments to display in their shops.
The hub
Interior of the SewAfrica Fashion Hub building
The thinking behind the hub is simple but smart. These young designers, some graduates from the nearby Wits Technikon and some from the SewAfrica Training Centre (Mann's initiative) in the fashion district, will rent a package deal in the hub, which will provide them with space for creating their designs, access to pooled machinery and equipment that they would not otherwise be able to purchase, changing rooms, a display area and administration facilities such as secretaries, telephone, fax and boardroom facilities.
"The equipment and machinery would normally cost around R90 000, way out of the reach of these young designers. This way they get access to the machinery and work together with a pool of other creative people," says Mann.
The Fashion Shack will be at 136 Pritchard Street (corner Pritchard and Polly streets). The building was recently bought by Mann and is in the final stages of renovation. It's been made into a creative space using the primary colours of the South African flag as the basis for its colour scheme.
Some floors have blue industrial rubberised flooring, others black or red with bright matching walls and window frames. The whole west side of the building consists of industrial windows, flooding the rooms with light. Each floor will accommodate different levels of expertise - as students from the SewAfrica Training Centre become more qualified they'll move up the building, eventually having their own space on the sixth floor.
"The idea is to encourage the designers not to do mass production. We want them to market themselves and their designs," says Mann. They're also encouraged to tie up with a micro CMT (cut, make and trim) business in the district, thus developing all aspects of the clothing chain.
Training centre
The training centre was established in 2002. It serves to give training to the informal fashion trade, improving their existing skills and introducing them to new ideas, and teaching them the basics of design and illustration. Lectures are given by final year Fashion Design and Clothing Management students from Wits Technikon.
The centre offers a practical three-year fashion design course, with business administration skills thrown in. Also on offer is a bridging year for students who don't qualify for entry into the Technikon.
Mann says they're attracting students from all over the country, and from central Africa. Each makes a contribution to the Pan-Africanism that is a big element of the hub.
Revival of district
Mann, who has been in the fashion business since 1981, has single-handedly been responsible for reviving the fashion district after it took a dive at the end of the 1980s, largely the result of globalisation and dumping of cheap garments on the local market.
In the last two years it's found its feet once more: factories have opened up again as smaller, more efficient operations, and most importantly, they've now found a more secure, niche market in ethnic African designs which can't be produced by Asian sweatshops because they're very individualistic and localised.
The area is certainly buzzing: there're around 500 tailors and seamstresses operating from this part of town, either as individual operators or as small factory productions.
SewAfrica fashion show
Some businesses operate on the pavements: men and women sit with manual sewing machines producing cushions, others sit shredding foam for the cushion stuffing.
Mann's sister and partner, Traci Mann, says they're keen to help these hard-working people by giving them some basic training and helping them to diversify their skills. In time and with funding, Mann is planning to purchase shredding machines to cut out the laborious time-consuming operations on the streets, and perhaps find them places of trade at the successful Mai Mai market south of the city.
She says: "These are hard-working people. We want to develop their potential and give them a sense of dignity."
Last year money was pumped into the district in an effort to revive it and to demarcate it as having a particular identity. Colourful mosaic stitches now run up the pavements of 20 blocks. Some 48 large steel garment patterns are to be erected on street poles; and 11-metre tall threaded colour gateways are to demarcate the district.
The fashion 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. 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.
The fashion district has been in the eastern part of the CBD for over half a century, with tailors and seamstresses bursting out of its buildings.
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