Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Angola's Passion for Fashion

After many years of isolation by the civil war, the Angolan fashion industry and its designers are now emerging and is winning plaudits for its fusion of African and interational style.  There was certainly no shortage of interest in Angolan's designs during Angolan's Fashion week in June 2010. There were eight Angolan designers altogether, including designers from Portugal, Brazil and the UK were present with an interest in the emerging designs.

Lucrécia Moreira, one of Angola's top designers states," Urban Angolans are characterized as very good consumers of fashion. This can be seen by walking down any street; they all like to dress well and look good. You can see all the new boutiques opening in Luanda – this is a big industry. When the Hugo Boss store opened a few years back, it made the most sales on its opening night of any Hugo Boss store in the world, which gives you an indication of the appetite people here have for fashion in Angola.”

Moreira’s work is a fusion of influences. She likes to use traditional African fabrics, patterns and colours with European flourishes to create a modern style but one with its roots in tradition. Explaining her style, Moreira said: “The education that we had during the long years of Portuguese colonisation did not allow us to interpret our own culture, so Angolans were not used to wearing African clothes.

“But through travelling around the continent I started to see that people in other African countries used African-style clothes and identified themselves as Africans through their clothes. It was from there that I started to create African fashion."

Ginga Neto, as pictured at left, has a Luanda boutique, Mahinda Prestige, that is becoming a fashion landmark. It is one of the few shops in the country where you can buy Angolan designed and produced clothes. The big attraction this season is Ginga’s new Jeanswear Collection, the first Angolan denim range, which comes with unique symbols of Chokwe sand paintings on the pockets. (Adapted from Sonangol Universo Magazine September 2010)

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to Sumbe and Luanda in January, and hope to find interesting African influenced prints/material to bring home.

Kassia Aminatha Agostinho said...

I am an Angolan fashion blogger and I was searching for other Angolan fashion bloggers and found this post. So honered
I really like it :)

www.kassiaagostinho.blogspot.com

sinem said...

Kassia I cannot reach your blog. I am a Turkish girl who lives at Angola and I have a blog too which explains Angola in a different perspectives. I would like to see more about fashion at Angola with more pictures.

If you wonder this is my blog page and I write 3 different languages:English,Turkish and Portegues

sisiatafrica.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

Angolan fashion is really interesting. i think Angolan fashion continue with African Wax Print Fabrics, it will be batter....

Unknown said...

Why is it so hard to source African fabrics made in Africa by Africans? Anybody tired of Chinese copycats? I am personally interested in getting the Angolan Samacaca fabric straight from Angola but it has proven to be something else. Are you able to help?

Unknown said...

Oh I forgot to add, especially the one wit the yellow-red-white-black combination

Zingce Shullz said...

@Doreen, did you manage to get information on where to buy Samakaka? I also have been searching but no info. I also have failed to get details on who produces African fabrics in Africa? Those Chinese imports are hits and misses, sometimes you get better quality but mostly nope.
Anybody from Angola to provide info please.

Unknown said...

i really like this Angolan fashion. very goo work.You guys can visit us for awesome AFRICAN ANKARA PRINTS, AFRICAN WHOLE SELL, AFRICAN DASHIKI, AFRICAN GEORGE we have really good collection of African Prints dress at low prices.R really good quality

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Anonymous said...

First of all, I'm thankful for my country to showing the our fashion outfit in the world and I like the outfit that you guys showing there so congratulations online shopping in Angola

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Tom said...

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