The style lounge 2017 is an event organised by Debonair-Afrik for the social, educational and cultural integration of designers, photographers, models and everyone in the fashion industry. Its aim is to assemble all talents and disseminate knowledge, both practical and theory to everyone and to foster healthy relationships among designers, models and everyone at large.
It was a two-day event which took place at the Impact hub at OSU, on Saturday and Sunday where the designers gave us a peek into the incredible indigenous talents and culture of Africa and how we emanate authenticity and craft at every given opportunity. The event commenced on Saturday with the first speaker, Molly Keogh, a co-designer at Osei-Duro speaking on Ethical fashion.
Osei-Duro’s designs are all about the colours and patterns of Africa blended and coordinated with the intercontinental styles to create clothing for everyone. Osei-Duro’s clothing is made in hand dyed in the firm. She emphasized how recycling is a necessity hence is their main reason for using hand dyes for their clothing to protect the eco system.
Our second speaker for the event, who was in the person of Rania Odaymat, centred on the need for creativity and originality. She explained how something can be made out of nothing, how to assemble the various variables to project a look or style depending on the concept or idea and how no one else can quite express and idea the way you would. Even though a group of people may be given a particular or common idea to work with, each and every one of them would express their thoughts in different ways. Though they may be similar, they will never be the same and that’s what makes us unique.
As the event rolled on, Nuel Bans from DebonairAfrik spoke about look books, how to assemble one, the factors to consider when creating a look book or fashion campaign, it types and mood boards. He explained a look book as ‘’fashion look books and campaigns are forms of fashion communication that markets a particular collection or brand. These tools are interrelated but serve different purposes of communication. Look books are to show details of a collection or capsules and are usually simple in nature but fashion campaigns are used in telling creative narratives’’.
He also mentioned that photographers, models, makeup artistes and creative directors/ stylists are the key players in planning and executing a fashion campaign/ look book. Finally, he explained the types of look books as conceptual and non-conceptual.
The final speaker was our very own Ngozi Dickson who described the fashion industry as one of the biggest players of the global economy. As everything being made has a cost of production, so does fashion. Dyeing, printing and bleaching are one of the most energy and chemical intensive stages along the manufacturing line. ‘The aim or goal of sustainable fashion is to bring environmentalism and social responsibility into all the stages and processes of production of a fashion goods and services’.
Sustainable fashion has some goals which focuses on both quantity and quality based on the law of demand and supply. Sustainable fashion brand itself in personality, core branding values, style, business/ ethical practices etc. she continued to give the three steps stability and maintaining your sustainability which included
Engage your people
Use proven frameworks
Implement best practices.
After these detailed presentations was a panel discussion where general important issues in the fashion industry was discussed.
On the final day, which was Sunday, there was a street style fashion show and photo shoot where we saw our fashion designers showcase some of their best clothing. Some of the designers who showcased were Osei-duro, Nuna Couture, Larry J collection and few more others. After the fashion show, there was a photo shoot section where anyone who wanted to take a shot of their street-styled clothing got a chance to be shot by some of our best photographers including Quincy Asephua of vine imagery and other photographers.
We concluded this year’s Style lounge with closed networking where social interactions were encouraged.
If you missed this year’s edition of Style lounge, you definitely missed too much. Be cool and don’t miss next year’s!
BY: PRISCA WOEDEM
