Neil Fraser
March 15, 2004
DURING the past couple of weeks I've found myself on a number of inner city building rooftops for a wide variety of occasions. A braai on the roof of the National Bank Building with Alfonso Botha who is converting the building, and at least six others, to upmarket residential and loft accommodation. The top of the Carlton Hotel with possible hotel operators.
Then, Sunday week ago on the roof of a building on the corner of Pritchard and Polly Streets (the heart of the emerging Fashion District) watching stunning models strut their stuff and showing off the latest in local fashion design.
The world of fashion and design apparently periodically gets its inspiration from various countries and continents, borrowing from their individualised styles, colours, textiles and textures. Some years ago it was Japan that led the fashion world, then South America with its Aztec motifs (remember when ponchos were the rage or does that merely show my age?).
More recently it has been India that has dominated the design scene. Rees Mann tells me that Africa is rapidly heading towards dominance in fashion design. By 2007 he expects that Africa will be generating a unique Pan African style that will be the envy of the world. And he should know as he is at the forefront to ensure that it happens.
I first mentioned proposals for the development of a Johannesburg Inner City Fashion District in November 2000. A year later Citichat covered the opening of SEWAFRICA, Rees Mann's brainchild, and on Sunday 29 February I attended the launch of his latest initiative, AFSEW Centre. But let me remind you of some of the background to the Fashion District - some of the following is extracted from a 2001 Citichat column.
David Mann, freshly out of his apprenticeship in Europe as a bespoke tailor, arrived in Pritchard Street Johannesburg in 1948. He was employed in the building next door to where his son, Rees Mann, opened SEWAFRICA in 2001. David recalls that the area in the late '40s was the centre for local garment manufacture. It was an incredibly vibrant and exciting place to work and his description of the sheer energy and vitality of those early days is quite exhilarating. Reminds me somewhat of movies of the rag trade in Manhattan in the '30s.
The crammed floors with hundreds of women frenetically sewing, the hustle and bustle of the streets, clothes hanging on fashion trolleys being pushed energetically across the roads from sweat shops to wholesalers, to retailers, by frenetic 'appies' mostly young designer hopefuls.
David describes how the local streets were clogged with railway delivery trucks queuing to offload fabrics into six storey buildings whilst they disgorged finished goods being rushed down the same lifts and staircases being used for delivery. Property developers were building large industrial buildings as rapidly as they could buy up land and the industry employed tens of thousands, mainly female, mainly Afrikaans and all white!
There were so many workers in the area that manufacturers had to stagger tea times so that the infrastructure of the area around them could cope! Lots of cafes, restaurants even a Cabaret Theatre. Great Portuguese restaurants. Support businesses, machine and equipment suppliers and maintenance shops flourished. Designers were in a frenzy keeping pace with or ahead of changing fashions. Standard Bank opened a branch specifically for the burgeoning industry.
Cape Town may have been the place for the really large factories, but Joburg was the place for women's clothing coming out of smaller manufacturers each employing 75 to 150 people.
1962 and a failed merger between a manufacturer of summer garments and another of winter garments provided an opportunity for David to buy the latter, "on tick"! He remembers cutting the patterns, sewing the samples, tearing down to United Purchasing (now the giant national retailer, Edgars) to show the made-up samples to tough fashion buyers, back to the shop to do alterations to suit their particular foibles; eventually getting the order for between 100 and 300 garments; hiring the old Chevy van from the corner garage for 10 shillings to collect the raw material and when the order was ready, hiring the old Chevy van for 10 shillings again to deliver the finished product. Hectic, frenetic, adrenaline-pumping exciting times.
1981 and son Rees joined the business but it was during a time of a fundamental change in the industry. It was also an era of dumping of illegally imported cheap garments. By the early '90s the factories had started working shorter hours - rentals had escalated and skilled labour had become both scarce and expensive. In fact skilled labour was now in such short supply (the white Afrikaans ladies were all long gone!) that some of the larger manufacturers in the area simply closed down and moved shop closer to the then 'partitioned' sources of labour.
Government's decentralisation policy exacerbated the problems the local industry was dealing with ("if you were shrewd, you could set up a factory in a decentralised area, employ x number of people and be paid handsomely without physically making anything at all"). By the late 1980s the industry as it had been had virtually disappeared and by 1992 the Manns closed their manufacturing operation.
They remember how some local manufacturers cleared out their equipment over weekends, when staff arrived at work on Monday the factory was empty. Others just deserted their factories and staff could be seen taking home sewing machines and furniture removed from the deserted premises in lieu of pay. Tough times as the industry virtually collapsed nationally, moving from totally formal to totally informal.
Rees Mann saw a need in the new emerging informal market for garment 'accessories' - the 'button and bow' needs of the industry (needs whether the industry was formal or informal) and rented space in 109 Pritchard Street in 1994.
Whilst the industry had changed it hadn't reduced in numbers, just formal to informal, and it had become niche market related rather than the broad manufacturing industry of previous years but buttons and bows and needles and cotton and tape and whatever is still needed. Every year the size of the business doubled as he built a new customer base - serving the emerging entrepreneurs who were themselves serving the emerging niche markets.
1994 and Rees says that the niche markets exploded with the inauguration of Nelson Mandela as the first President of the newly democratic nation. Amongst peoples from all over the world who arrived for the occasion were those from Nigeria, Togo, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Ghana and other African nations, all attired in the magnificence of their national dress.
After decades of domination in everything including dress, local Africans realised that they had also lost much of their own traditional fashion roots. So a new demand in male and female and children's wear emerged. And it was local - unique - it couldn't be copied by the sweat shops of the east because it was not suited for mass production.
We use accessories differently, we want materials with traditional patterns and prints. The former President's shirts had a huge influence on the male market - traditional black-tie for formal events was rejected in favour of 'formal African' - a new industry was emerging, but, locally, there was a huge vacuum in the skills needed to meet the new demands.
The traditionalists, along with the designers had deserted the inner city as the industry had gone through its metamorphosis but the potential remained in this area of the inner city as it flooded with seamstresses and entrepreneurs trying to make a living. SEWAFRICA was established to fill the gap.
Apart from the 'buttons and bows' it provided training and cutting rooms, fashion display and ramp areas and even a Fashion Caf where local emerging designers could browse the pages of the latest international fashion magazines. 109 Pritchard became the hub of the emerging Fashion District.
Some specialised businesses remained - Eve's Millinery in President Street is one of probably only three businesses in the world that supplies the international market with feather headdresses and harnesses for dancers - you would have seen their products on you TV if you saw anything of the Rio Carnival. Then the World Costume Emporium in Pritchard Street provides specialised costumes for all kinds of events from Presidential inaugurations to the closing ceremony of the Rugby World Cup some years ago.
On 29 February, Rees launched AFSEW Centre. Diagonally opposite his earlier project, SEWAFRICA, this new venture raises both Rees' vision and the inner city fashion district to another level. Comprising six 500 square metre floors plus ground floor and basement, the building was built in 1966 specifically for the clothing industry. It was later used as a diamond cutting works but has basically stood unoccupied for the past ten years. Rees purchased the building last year and has invested about R1.5 million in refurbishing the building.
Externally the building is picked out in colours from the South African flag, two floors in red, two in blue and two in green. To make sure you don't miss the building nor fail to register its use, a tape measure, hangs from roof to ground on the Pritchard and Polly Street corner. At a metre wide and 23 metres long, it is the largest tape measure in the world!
The two top floors, six and five - red - have been designed as a 'fashion hub' and have been reserved for 36 emerging designers. The minimum entry requirement is a three-year national diploma in fashion design but little else other than talent is needed. Here such designers will have access to nearly R100 000.00 worth of equipment so that at this embryo stage they will not have to expose themselves to the cost of the capital investment needed in their industry.
They will not be permitted to employ staff but will have communal facilities and support. They will all be limited to a two year occupancy period during which the focus will be on design and establishing a business. Successful designers will be able to take premises on lower floors at the end of the two year period, or more likely, to set up their businesses elsewhere in the Fashion District.
Floors four and three - the 'blue floors' - will house the SEWAFRICA training centre previously housed in 109 Pritchard. Those premises had been planned to provide a training centre in design and all aspects of manufacture for a five-year period but have outgrown themselves in half that time. The space vacated in 109 will now be given over to fashion industry related admin offices.
The two lowest floors - green - floors two and one, have been sub-divided into ten studios and let to established designers. Unlike the emerging designers on the two upper levels, these designers are self-contained having their own staff and equipment.
The ground floor and roof brings it all together. The ground floor houses the 'Fashion Shack', a retail space where all the designers in the building will exhibit their wares which can then be bought by the public. But it will also act as a showcase and stimulus to buyers to meet the individual designers whose work they may particularly fancy for the purpose of placing additional orders etc.
The roof will be used for fashion shows as it was when the launch took place a couple of weeks back. A number of established and emerging designers showed off their work which was quite outstanding. I asked Rees about the stunning models and he told me that they were from both South Africa and a number of other African countries - like the design, all of this is to infuse a Pan African look to fashion so that in future we won't single out the designs (or models) of individual African countries as such but develop and focus world attention on a sub continental style, a Pan African Fashion Statement. And it's happening here!
