Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
A fitting time to WearSA’s finest
Designer takes local fashion blueprint forward
CAPE TOWN fashion designer, Tamysn Johannisen, believes the local fashion industry is at an exciting juncture.
She is one of the designers whose work is being showcased during the WearSA Fashion Festival, a campaign that seeks to promote the clothing and textile sector.
It encompasses design, manufacturing and retail, and encourages consumers to become “Local Label Lovers”.
The WearSA Fashion Festival is held in conjunction with the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (Sactwu).
It includes a series of events including workshops, as well as the Fashion and all that Jazz gala dinner, which took place on the eve of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
This year, another event, the People’s Runway, was added.
Born and raised in Cape Town Johannisen, 28, studied fashion at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.
Plunging straight into the world of fashion design, she began her career on the women’s wear design team at Woolworths.
But it wasn’t long before her talent was recognised and was selected as an emerging designer, and designing her first collection for the first WearSA Fashion Festival gala dinner event in 2015.
Since then she has developed a style of her own, and the mindset to go with it.
“Fashion is at an exciting juncture in South Africa right now. I get a real sense that we are looking to the West less and less for design influences as we are becoming more confident in who we are and where we are going; with a more independent fashion flow that is wholly South African,” she said.
“Our fabrication is also developing as we become inspired by our own cultures; in fact, we are way less reliant on international trends and they (the design community outside of South Africa) are now looking at us for something new and fresh,” she said.
Johannisen is an advocate of the WearSA movement, something she sees adopted by more of her friends, too, as they become more selective about what the buy.
“Fast Fashion is not as important as it once was.
“People are purchasing their fashion items differently now – more responsibly, she said.
The young designer believes this is good news for the local industry as the smaller cut, make and trim organisations are still under threat of closure due to competition with cheaper imports.
“This makes what WearSA is doing, all the more important,” she said of the WearSA movement and the People’s Runway, which will take place at Canal Walk today at 2pm.
Johannisen’s ultimate design dream is “not about who I design for, but rather that the international design community respects what we are creating here, and wish for it to be available in their own country”.
Wayne van der Rheede, spokesperson for WearSA, said: “In his State of the Nation speech, President Cyril Ramaphosa alluded to the need to support and build a robust clothing and textile sector.
“We want to thank President Ramaphosa for his support, and show him we mean business, too, by calling on as many South Africans to come and walk the Wear SA Fashion Forward Runway with us in April.”