You don’t have to look too far to know that there’s more to African fashion than wax print motifs. And yet even the savviest industry insiders often have trouble thinking beyond the old clichés. It’s something Nisha Kanabar and Georgia Bobley are hoping to change with a new online platform that showcases the full breadth and depth of design on the continent. “The industry here is so fractured. People in Nigeria know little about what’s happening in Kenya or Mozambique, for example,” says Kanabar, a native Tanzanian, who cut her teeth as a fashion marketer working for the likes of both Indian and American Vogue. “Our question was: How do we connect the dots between the different countries?”
Launching today, Industrie Africa is the digital answer to a traditional showroom, housing over 80 designers from 24 nations across Africa. It took Kanabar and Bobley, a born New Yorker based in Dubai, one year to cover ground at all four corners of the continent, and cull the brightest and best designers. With options to search by country, category (womenswear, menswear, accessories), and sustainability, navigating the site is far more efficient than trawling the racks at a trade show, say. That said, it’s easy to fall down an Internet rabbit hole on the platform, given the number of impressive collections. As someone who considers herself to be a bit of an African fashion nerd, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of great young designers I found on Industrie Africa that were completely new to me. Take Kidd Hunta, for example, a menswear label redefining the look of Zimbabwean identity with tailoring filtered through a sub-Saharan lens. Or Thebe Magugu, whose artsy, expertly layered aesthetic speaks to a new generation of stylish and empowered South African women. The rough-hewn elegance of Ami Doshi Shah’s jewelry line, I Am I, is certainly enough to stop even the most casual online fashion tourist in their tracks.
“People often view African fashion as a trend that comes in waves and it’s so much more than that,” says Kanabar, who hopes the site will become a go-to destination for buyers, editors, and consumers alike. “We want to show that there’s a diversity of talent here that defies all expectations.”
