An event awaited by fashion enthusiasts, Dakar Fashion Week has managed to be held this year despite the global pandemic. The fashion designer and organizer of the event, Adama Ndiaye, managed to cope with the health situation by asking designers to offer “eco-responsible” collections. The main focus was thus given to materials from the continent and Dakar Fashion Week rebounded by offering a magical and unique parade in the middle of the baobabs.
A complicated context
One of the fashion events that count on the African continent, Dakar Fashion Week has established itself over the years beyond borders. Sa 18e edition will have been particularly difficult to set up in the context of the coronavirus pandemic which has impacted many artistic, cultural and economic sectors. First postponed, this cultural event was finally held on December 12 and 13, 2020 in Dakar. It must be said that for its organizer, the Senegalese fashion designer, Adama Ndiaye at the origin of the brand Adama Paris, “it was unthinkable not to do this edition. This year has been hard for everyone, and for the creators in particular. There were no sales and the shops having been closed, it was important to maintain Dakar Fashion Week ”. Despite the constraints, she was able to count on the support of fashion designers to offer once again a spotlight on African talents this year, remaining faithful to her leitmotif of promoting the stylists and the artisanal riches of the continent.
Unlike previous years when the Dakar Fashion Week would run over more or less a week, this 2020 edition will have been greatly reduced because it is limited to two days. Until the last moment, the program will have been lightened: the brunch-parade of young creators originally was thus canceled at the last minute, the recent ministerial decrees prohibiting gatherings in the face of the resurgence of people affected by Covid-19 in the country.
A parade among the baobabs
To limit the risks and respect the health instructions as well as possible, the creator of the Adama Paris brand proposed for the first time to export the big parade outside Dakar: a new formula. The audience of masked and handpicked guests were able to attend a show in a dream setting, in Nguékhokh, about 60 km from Dakar. Around ten African designers, mostly Senegalese or residing in Senegal, were able to present their creations during a parade in the middle of a baobab forest. An unprecedented podium, on the clay, and in the shade of these majestic giants to better sublimate creations sometimes rich in color, sometimes monochrome.
Emphasis on eco-responsible fashion
Placed under the theme of eco-responsible fashion, the designers presented collections in the spirit of “slow-fashion”, with the idea of a more responsible fashion which is concerned with sustainability, plays on recycling and highlights the riches of the continent by favoring available materials and local know-how such as embroidery or weaving “for a fashion that resembles us and brings us together”. Experienced as a challenge for some, the Covid has pushed designers to reinvent themselves to offer quality and luxurious African fashion that would also take into account sustainability issues. “African designers are already used to a restricted fashion compared to the West because here we produce in small quantities” recalls the designer of Adama Paris.
To get around the Covid, new technologies
Measures to fight against the spread of the Covid oblige, 150 guests instead of the usual 1,000 were able to attend the parade on Saturday. To compensate for this lack of assistance, the designer has innovated by using the “pay per view” system, payment by sequence. After purchasing a paid pass, the Internet user could attend the parade from his living room and find himself transported among the baobabs of Nguékhokh. A way to make the parade more visible but also not to limit the event to Senegal by making it visible to Internet users around the world.
To close these two days of Dakar Fashion Week, a talk highlighted the importance of digital technology and technological tools, even more so in this complex period. “The Covid encourages us to take an interest in new models, to bounce back. With this pandemic, we have rethought the technologies and their use to see how to put them at our service ”underlines Ibrahima Faye, founder of Beuz Pro, a company specializing in new media technologies which took care of the broadcast of the parade. A central reflection for the future.
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