Categories
creative economy fashion

Amanda Laird Cherry @ The Space

Over the weekend, I bought a plum/wine/merlot dress from The Space that made my heart sing. After all these years, The Space is still giving me my regular local fashion fix at great prices. I noticed that I gravitate towards Amanda Laird Cherry who produces clothes that exude womanliness using exquisite fabrics.

Spring/Summer 2010

According to her website:

Amanda is one of a small handful of South African designers who has historically fused the development of her clothes with that of the country…Her collections over the past decade have presented a different kind of reconciliation process, one which unites our intersecting histories into a collective present.

On the ramp, she is both an artist and a story-teller, telling her own personal stories with cloth and thread in much the same way that cultures have done all over the world even before the construction of the first needle.  And, although locally informed, her cloth-based narratives nonetheless manage to consistently wow the local and international fashion press. It’s the old story of using specifics to achieve universality.”

To see more of her collections: Amanda Laird Cherry

Categories
creative economy fashion style

Curiosity about oneself


Soon after flying into New York on Sunday, I headed to the Met for a talk featuring Iris Apfel – Good Taste/Bad Taste: The evolution of contemporary chic. This was very well attended, with Park Avenue matrons rubbing shoulders with minimally clad artists.

How does this woman do it? She is 90. She was recently the face of MAC lipstick. Her style has been the subject of an exhibition at the Costume Institute. She is certainly one of those women who inspire us to welcome the prospect of aging, gracefully, of course.

The talk also featured teenage blogger Tavi Gevinson. The discussion was wide-ranging and touched on how contemporary women experience fashion, beauty and style. Iris talked about how women have become fearful and desperate in their quest to look great. Some suffer from too much good taste and end up looking uptight (Kate Middleton was cited as one such character). At the other end of the spectrum are designers such as Prada, who made ugly cool, or Gaultier, with his 1993 collection of ‘rabbinic chic’, or Marc Jacobs with his grunge collection.

Personal style is curiosity about oneself, Iris quoted an unknown source. For Tavi, fashion is fantasy or building a force-field around oneself. Good fashion is good performance art. And yet, sadly, beauty has become a burdensome responsibility for a certain kind of woman, whereas style should be about freedom.

The old feminist debates endure (though Iris thinks most feminism was bunk). Perhaps the difference is that nowadays women pay for their own bondage.

Personal style is curiosity about oneself. I will hold on that.

Iris Apfel at home
Muse of New York
Advanced Style blog
Rookie Mag – Tavi Gevinson
Gaultier’s Rabbi Chic

Categories
African Queen afro-chic fashion Leitch social enterprise

African Queen – socially conscious accessories

After viewing some art at Gallery 2 earlier today, I popped into African Queen in The Parks Centre. African Queen sells beautiful fashionable items, ranging from the most afro-fabulous leather bags, purses, belts, stationery, clothes and home-ware. The bags have it-bag potential – they are well designed and striking, some with bead details. They are all in the afro-chic mode, without being over the top.

Big Mama Red Leather

Though there are one or two bags, like the Nguni cow hide and the in-your-face animal print bags, that hearken back to dated ideas about what constitutes African design.

Nguni Big Mama

All the items sold in the store are handmade in South Africa. The founder of the business, Nicola Leitch, is also driven by a social mission. According to the store’s brochure, employees can work at home, saving on childcare and transport costs, and a percentage of turnover is donated to orphanages and feeding schemes in Southern African communities.

Mama Clutch with Tassle Silver Leather

I must mention that the sales lady in the Parkwood store is impossibly vivacious! I enjoyed the time I spent there.


African Queen stores can be found at 9 The Parks, corner of Jan Smuts and Wells in Parkwood Johannesburg and Shop 4 Gowrie Village Nottingham Road KZN Midlands.

Links
http://www.africanqueen.co.za/

All pictures by African Queen.