The New fashion Destination: South Africa

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batic, colors, creative, fabric, fashion blog, fashion illustrations, freelance fashion designer, indie designers, New York fashion week, pattern, tech pack, wax print

 Fashion is probably the last thing that comes to one’s mind when thinking of South Africa. But this pre-conceived notion of South Africa is very deceptive.  In fact, South Africa  is one of the looming industries in the world and every big international label is ready to set foot into this subcontinent mainly due to its increasing global prominence. The unique combination of highly sophisticated infrastructure with its emerging economy, South Africa has given a huge market for strong entrepreneurial and other dynamic investment. 

New Fashion Town- South Africa
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Some accessories brands also establishes its market in SA

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SA’s fashion designers

The Cape Town Fashion Week held on July 2011 gave this town a new glamour and it got raised to one of the prominent fashion centrals of the world. Another eye-striking event that changed the face of South Africa to the world is the Global Language Monitor organized last year. Cape Town and Johannesburg both made it on the list of Top 30 Fashion Capitals of the world at the global language monitor, at 23, 25 respectively, between the fashionable cities of Rome, Buenos Aires and Prague. Also to increase the importance of South Africa as the new fashion central, many multinational brands are setting foot in South Africa. 

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SA Fashion Week

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In SA fashion needs are served by the Countries’ local retailers

Despite choosing the continent’s robust retailers, many of which have been loyally and consistently serving the people of SA for their entire lifestyle, many international brands are cementing their units here and are importing goods from Europe, Asia to nearly 45% duty.

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Fashion Models at Soweto Fashion Week in SA in 2012

Having said that, it doesn’t mean that South Africa is neglecting their indigenous designers. Fab.com launched its South African design Pop-up shop which is mainly a virtual boutique of some of the unique retailers of 25 South African designers. The collection will hosts home accessories, jewelry as well as apparels. It was unveiled at a special occasion in NYC after consolation with South African Consulate General.

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Virtual Design Showroom by Fab.com

What do you think about this new fashion destination? Tell me at the comments section.

The new fashion destination: Dubai

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Abhaya, apparels, colors, Dubai fashion week, Dubai mall, dubai shopping festival, fashion blog, freelance fashion designer, headgear, scarfs, stoles, surface embroideries, tech pack, trends

Dubai has been gaining popularity over the years as the fashion central of the world.  All eyes have turned to see what wonders this Arab country holds under its wings. This means all the shopping addicted people are now directed here. The signature style for Arab fashion was the wise use of scarf, but later trends diversified.

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Title: Scarf’s traditionally

Dubai became a very famous destination in the passing years and it even hosted Dubai Fashion Week for first time in 2005. It was organized by FZ LLC and was co-founded by Marc Robinson, the famous international designer. Other highlights of the Fashion Week are, showcasing designs in the Eco Talent area, showing short films and viewing the ramp in touch screen monitors.

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Dubai fashion Week- in the process

Also it’s not just the Dubai’s fashion week that attracts visitors to this country, the record of visitors in the Dubai Mall firmly stood at 6.25 million making it the most visited mall in the world. From 54 million in 2011, the number rose to 65 million in 2012 and the owner, Emaar Properties recorded a flat growth of 15 per cent. The increasing number of visitors in 2013 is a clear statement of the increasing popularity of its global reputation. The digits surpassed the shoppers at the other leading malls of America (Mall of America) and UK (Bullring Birmingham).

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Dubai’s fashion

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Rising star

To harness more profit from this increasing popularity, another ambitious project is being set up which will prove to be a design district where designer’s can put-up their designs. The aim is to boost fashion activities in Dubai and also to attract foreign designers.

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Sexy in white-Dubai

Also Vogue magazine has plans to launch an event in this October where all the fashionista of the world as well as the fashion writers and readers will attend. It will display designs from as much as 8 designers, mostly handpicked by Vogue. Designers like Simone Rocha from Ireland, Andrea Incontri from Italy and Razan Alazzouni from Saudi Arabia.  It seems like the time is near when Dubai will become a big player in the fashion business and will soon enthrall the world with its new talents.

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Dubai Fashion Week

What do you think about the rising emphasis of Dubai as a fashion central? Tell me in the comments section.

The Bonobos Dress Shirt Assortment for Spring/Summer 2014

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Bonobos, dress shirt, fashion blog, Spring Summer 2014, tailored slim

I had an opportunity to take an exclusive preview of Bonobos’ Dress Shirt Assortment for SS’14 that goes live today. Bonobos is a men’s apparel brand focused on providing better-fitting clothes and a better shopping experience.

The range comprises largely of check prints and stripes meant for office wear, with a couple of surprises thrown in. The blue micro-floral print definitely stands out among the rest of the geometrical landscape, and makes an interesting deviation from the overall trend adopted. Bonobos aims to provide a better fit of clothes, with styles that are classical and evergreen. Different hues of blue tend to dominate, with a few others like pink and grey thrown in to liven up the mix. While the colors stay within the boundaries of standard office wear, the key differentiation lies in the fit.

Bonobos’ focus on fit has led them to develop three fits that they feel cover the majority of male body forms. The shirts fall into three categories – standard, slim fit and tailored slim. While the standard and slim fits have been around in the majority of menswear brands, Bonobos focuses on the tailored slim look for a form fit that is close to a custom tailored shirt. This provides a degree of taper that can address those with mid-sized waists and provide to some extent the slimmed-down effect that has become popular in men’s fashion of late.

While the focus on form is likely to be popular with a significant portion of the male population, a little more attention to color trends would make the range more appealing. You can check out their range at the online store here.

The upcoming fashion destination – North America

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apparels, blog, business, fabric, fashion, fashion blog, freelance fashion designer, garments, Milan, new fashion destination, New York, north America, Paris, pattern, tech pack, upcoming fashion, victoria's secret

Fashion had always seen its morning in Paris and evening in Milan. Between these two fashion centrals “The New fashion Destinations – North America has emerged. North America might sounds new today among Paris, Milan and New York but it has not been a newbie always. North America was introduced to fashion when English settlers came to settle in there. At the same time the ‘new people’ adopted many Native American dresses and since then innovations continued with the dressing sense. And with the changing times, nineteenth century saw revolutions in apparel designs. With the change in attitude, the designers started digging inside the native traditions of America, Africa, and India etc to blaze the ramp.

Beautiful dresses by the natives of North America
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The native patterns of the North American are now very wisely used by the fashion designers all over the world. Vibrancy and colors are always welcomed on the ramp and so were these new designs.

Beautiful dress designed with the native patterns and prints.
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Innovation bloomed and people started experimenting with the patterns. In this process while some got criticized others were widely appreciated due to the smell of freshness in these designs. Through renovations we have come across many new designers who have created a mark due to the change in the typical type set designs

Mixing both ends of fashion
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Earlier designers were digging with creativity to search for new designs but now native North America is the new Mecca. From controversy to style, there is nothing that is stopping the designers to bring in more native trends to their palette.

Victoria’s secret model
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Little creativity can do wonders!
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 What do you think about this dough of North and South America?