PARIS — African fashion is enjoying a renaissance as a new generation of designers captures the imagination of luxury brands and consumers. But while the continent is rich with creativity, most brands have found it difficult to grow beyond their borders due to a lack of formal training.
That’s the assessment of Sophie Nzinga Sy, a Senegalese designer who has opened the Dakar Design Hub, a training center that offers courses for budding fashion entrepreneurs and local tailors alike.
Nzinga Sy launched her Sophie Zinga brand in 2012 after studying fashion design at The New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York City, having dropped out of her previous studies in economics at school.
“I opened my first store in 2013, started trying to recruit staff from different design schools like you normally would and just looked for factories that could develop my collections. And I had a really bad time and it was like an awakening for me,” she said.
“I literally couldn’t believe it because for me, Dakar is one of the fashion capitals. [throughout] Africa, so I thought it would be easier to find an assistant fashion designer or a pattern designer and it was very, very difficult. And the more I traveled across the continent, whether it was in Ghana or Nigeria, I would talk to my colleagues and they would tell me the same thing,” he said.
“African fashion was making a lot of noise, but I think the missing link was quality fashion education across the continent and especially in Senegal. And so, in 2015, I began to ideate.
“It was more at first just a fashion school that I was thinking about launching and then as I moved on and looked at the ecosystem and looked at all the different things that I needed support on, I thought about having a hub that just has different components and supports to the younger generations,” recalled Nzinga Sy.
Students at the Dakar Design Hub.
Courtesy of Sophie Nzinga Sy
The campus, an hour from the Senegalese capital, was formally inaugurated a year ago and began offering courses in February. The school is starting small, with 50 to 100 students expected to attend in the first year, but hopes to eventually receive 250 to 500 students annually.
“We have different target audiences. Our main target audience is our fashion entrepreneurs who basically have their own brands, already have a store or sell online, but need the tools to better understand what they are doing business-wise, but also looking for the design elements of fashion that I never really had a chance to learn in school,” she said.
These courses last between two weeks and six months.
“Second, in 2024, we will launch degree programs, so we will be looking for high school graduates who are only interested in fashion design and who want to study fashion.
“And then our third audience is tailors and professionals who work in the fashion industry, pattern makers and machine technicians who need to improve what they already know to better serve entrepreneurs and maybe work for factories,” he explained. “We are slowly building our curriculum, which will lead us to higher education and not just professional courses.”
Through word of mouth, Nzinga Sy recruited an international faculty with professors from Senegal, the US, The Gambia, Canada, and France. “He’s really been a great melting pot of different people who are experts at a very high level,” she said.
He noted that Patricia Blackburn, the director of the fashion program, has more than 20 years of experience working in Hong Kong, the US and Canada. “The idea is really to make sure that whatever we’re doing and teaching really aligns with today’s global fashion landscape,” she said.
Nzinga Sy also brings her own experience as an entrepreneur to the table. Between 2012 and 2017, the Sophie Zinga brand produced seasonal collections and staged fashion shows in Milan, New York, Paris, Dubai, Lagos, Nigeria and Johannesburg, South Africa, as well as Dakar.
“I think I was the first to venture into ready-to-wear luxury in Senegal,” she said. “The bottom line was that there was a certain niche in Senegal, in West Africa, of people who really wanted to buy luxury African fashion, but it was a very small niche.”
With suits priced from $200 to $2,000, the brand used imported fabrics, an approach that ultimately seemed expensive and unsustainable to the designer. “And so it was about, how do I redefine Senegalese luxury? And through that I started thinking about a more contemporary brand that would speak more to the new African consumer,” he said.
She went on hiatus from the Sophie Zinga brand in 2017 and returned in 2019 with Baax, a more accessible label focused on sustainability.
Nzinga Sy showed her new collection on Saturday as part of Dakar Fashion Week and will present her designs at London Fashion Week for the first time in February as part of a showcase for African countries organized by the British Council. The organization, which specializes in international cultural and educational opportunities, has also provided funding for the Dakar Design Hub.
SewedoProd/Courtesy of Sophie Nzinga Sy
“I had a hard time finding the funding for this because in 2015 in Senegal people didn’t take fashion or the creative industries too seriously, so it was very difficult to explain the project and I had to go through different doors to get access to it. the foundership. The banks had no interest in financing something like this,” said Nzinga Sy.
She sold a house she owned as seed money and eventually obtained a $50,000 loan from the Délégation Générale à l’Entreprenariat Rapide des Femmes et des Jeunes, or DER, a government business institution that helps small and medium-sized businesses.
The German Agency for International Cooperation, known as GIZ, provided funds for salaries, machinery and other costs, but Nzinga Sy is seeking additional partnerships. A team from Chanel, which is preparing to show its Métiers d’Art collection in Dakar on Tuesday, recently visited the facility.
“I always say that the Dakar Design Hub is a social project. It is not a project that will generate money in the coming years. We are trying to structure the industry through education in Senegal and that is a very, very difficult and ambitious feat. So to do that, we really need more support in terms of human resources but also finances in general,” he said.
Thanks to existing donations, the school has been able to offer some free courses, in addition to granting seed loans through a launch contest.
“We seek to partner with different institutions, international fashion schools, but also with foundations that are interested in granting scholarships,” he said. “A lot of the students who are interested in fashion can’t afford student fees, so our next big step is to be able to roll it out in 2023.”
Nzinga Sy said her experience has taught her the value of a formal fashion education.
“I got the foundation I needed as a fashion designer to be able to start my brand when I was 23 years old,” she said. “Over ten years ago, African fashion was still hot and still new, and I think having Parsons on my resume was really helpful in navigating different spaces.”
Yvonne Watson, Parsons’ interim dean, helped her develop the curriculum for the Dakar Design Hub. “She was the dean of the curriculum when I was at the school, so we developed a great relationship,” said Nzinga Sy. Still, she is anxious for the institution to stand on its own.
“We are really trying to build our credibility as a Dakar Design Hub and as a fashion school and then as the years go by I think it would be beneficial to have a name like Parsons or Central Saint Martins as an exchange partner,” he said. she said.
Nzinga Sy believes that the partnership is key to unlocking the potential of the African continent and should benefit all parties.
“There is just this hunger for African fashion because of the creativity that has just been untapped and I think if we are going to look inward and think about what a new fashion means for the global fashion industry, we have to collaborate and we have than work together. ,” she said.
“Obviously, there is a large consumer base in Africa that is untapped. Almost a billion people live on the continent and that is already a great opportunity not only for African fashion designers but also for global fashion brands”, she concluded.
Source: news.google.com