By Miss Nyaguthii
[Reposted from: https://ikumbimag.wordpress.com/2024/11/26/kibera-fashion-week-2024/]
I had probably looked out the window stoically pensive about the heavy downpour outside, outside where I was meant to be at the Kibera Fashion Week 2024 when a post from Lookslikeavido popped up on my Instagram feed. It read, “due to the heavy rains the today’s edition for KBW is postponed to tomorrow. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience but we promise we will be back tomorrow in full swing. Nobody can stop reggae!” To the last part I made a mental note that they would proceed tomorrow come rain come shine. Noted with elation but I kept on swiping up and double tapping on my screen before finally deciding to go study for my upcoming Media Law and Ethics exams which I vow to pass with a distinction this time. Nobody can stop reggae. I was darting my eyes across the defenses of breach of confidence when a new plan kickstarted and I traded my notes for gin and a few episodes of Stranger things. When I woke up the next morning the sun was as bright as the day I was about to have. I spent the day blanketed in the warmth of a community where life is nurtured and life blooms. Where being part of a community is not defined through blending in or standing out but through simply being and letting that speak for ourselves. This is Kibera Fashion Week 2024 through the lens of my beautiful brown eyes.
Kibera Fashion Week 2024 was soul touching, soul awakening if I may. You could feel it through the style of the attendees. There was no trying to be, just living. For style and in style. One that I will remember for a long time was someone wearing padlocks as earrings and I wondered if he brought the keys too. You could feel it through the designs and the designers in the exhibition. Prius Ochieng who makes apocalyptic art designs through recycling waste materials touched my soul in a most inspiring feel when he shared the story behind his designs. “When most people think of Kibera they think of the slum, the dirt and the trash. When people come here they don’t see beyond that. Kibera is home so I started collecting trash and creating this,” he pointed at the designs displayed in front of us and I said, “treasure.” Touched to the core.
It was even more clear film screening which documented the process of the making of Kibera Fashion Week’s previous edition. Evidence that it takes a village to build a community was all over the film and in this particular community, inclusivity and sustainability is not just a concept but a form. To state it plainly in case it is not clear to this point, David “Avido” Ochieng is a truthful person. Top three truths by Avido; Kibera Fashion Week is a community. Two, people out here normally see the glamour in TVs and they don’t see the glamour in their own streets. Not knowing that we have it here, it’s only that we haven’t been able to acknowledge it on own own self. Three, Avido wants us to keep on accepting ourselves because when we accept ourselves we become a weapon, and we become very lethal whereby people will never take you for granted.
Kibera Fashion Week 2024 which was curated into two categories; design exhibition and film screening, was facilitated by David Avido in collaboration with Lookslikeavido, Avido Foundation and Goethe Institute. Category three was a result of Avido genuinely campaigning for humans to happily exist as themselves. So if you were neither inside watching the film screening nor at the designs exhibition you were outside catching sights of people dressed like as if to say, “why would you want to be anybody else?”
The items on display at the exhibition were designs by the same designers who created everything adorned by the models on the Kibera Fashion Week 2023 runway. Typically, designers use runways to showcase their work which means they are in close proximity to be seen but not to be touched. The design exhibition at KBW2024 was curated to enable people to touch the designs, feel the textures, if they like buy and take home. It was also a chance for other members of the community to engage with the designers and peek at their brains on their overall feel and process of creating the designs.
I love designers when they don’t just make designs whose outlook is appealing to the eye and their feel on the skin gratifying. I love them so much more when they say things like, “to understand my designs you need to first understand me. I am grandiose, regal, gorgeous, ostentatious.” Then you look at the designs and it feels illegal to describe them in any other words but those. Using any other words to describe Nikongamani jewelry by Carlton Gandani just wouldn’t be right. However, it is proper to add that the creations of Nikongamani dares me to charge my willingness to be seen to a hundred percent. The first Kibera Fashion Week took place at the railway line in Kibera, they would pause if there was a train passing and continue after it’s gone. Mind blowing, right? Carlton hadn’t started their jewelry brand then. A week after launching Ngamani, they saw the call out for Kibera fashion week and did I say the biggest qualifying factor for the auditions was simply being yourself and presenting that in your collection. On the 7th of December, Carlton will showcasing their Marejeo Collection at the Mbinguni Kwetu Fashion Show. The show is a representation and a form of healing for little Carlton who felt neglected, abandoned, unsafe and unseen.
Ten designers; Prius Ochieng, Carlton Gandani, Mariah Kwamboka, Hellen Njenga, Brillian Lutomia, Joyleen Chepngetic, Millicent Oluoch, Beth Kariuki, Sophie Barbier and Bradox Ochieng, were selected from an audition of the best designers across Kenya. The ten designed for 20 models for the Kibera Fashion Week 2023 whose runway was staged on top of matatus in acknowledgement and appreciation of the vibrant matatu culture. Walking on matatus sounds dangerously intriguing but I’ll have you know that the models underwent a thorough training served in full vigorous form by the one and only Letoya Johnstone. I saw it. To create a sense of curiosity, hope and opportunity, Avido organized trips to art centers like The Opportunity Factory for the models to see how a mass production is done and Kuona Art Collective for more insightful engagements. Also on display at KFW2024 were hand painted art canvas including a live matatu art installation by One Walls, a mural agency brought to life by a collective of artists. They were painting when I got there, they were still painting when I left. Before I left, I looked at 1944 Bantu’s apron full of dried paint from all of his previous paint work projects and wished I could live in it for just a day. Every color on that navy blue fabric is a story accompanying him to the next place he wears it.
Nyieth Gabbie is an incredible human. She was a model at the Kibera Fashion Week 2023 runway. She models, recreates clothes, makes hair and runs a campaign called her flow my concern. She faced impediments in the documentation process of her operations at the beginning of her journey being that she is a South Sudanese native living in Kenya. Her Flow My Concern uses art to raise awareness on period poverty, highlighting the challenges faced by many girls all around the country who end up ashamed due to period stigmatization.
Nyieth Gabbie is an incredible human. She was a model at the Kibera Fashion Week 2023 runway. She models, recreates clothes, makes hair and runs a campaign called her flow my concern. She faced impediments in the documentation process of her operations at the beginning of her journey being that she is a South Sudanese native living in Kenya. Her Flow My Concern uses art to raise awareness on period poverty, highlighting the challenges faced by many girls all around the country who end up ashamed due to period stigmatization.
The organization invites fathers and brothers to find it a normal thing to purchase pads for their brothers and sisters. They use the proceeds they get from creating and selling hand painted art, t-shirts and more to to provide sanitary towels to girls in slums and rural areas. All year round, Her Flow My Concern holds mentorship programs to spread love and awareness to build period dignity and positivity.
When I saw Bokka Atelier by Mariah Kwamboka at the exhibition I thought, “wow. Bold.” But I had a lot of questions at the back of my mind which I just couldn’t comprehend to ask aloud coherently. Then the answers found me sitting on the third row on the left at the film screening. Having found fashion as a way to give back to the less fortunate in the community, she wanted to portray fashion in a way that uplifts the community.
She wanted to make designs that evoke confidence and show her capability as a Kenyan designer to the rest of the world. Her collections beaded and see through are not meant to be sexy but give the illusion. She said risky and wow, I kindly oblige.
Avido originally wanted to be an electrical engineer. Thankfully he doesn’t believe in limitations so throughout his life he has tried poetry, hip-hop, taekwondo and later fashion, which if you are reading this I think we can all agree we are glad he did it. Then again this experience was all in the arts. He found fashion as a way of speaking for and about one’s self. When you look at art you look at a person’s trauma and pain, their scars and the chaos within them, their hopes and dreams. Their memories, story and life. It is a healing expression. It is therapy. As an artist, it can be hurtful to your self belief and your self esteem if the people around you do not understand the way you express yourself through words or through your art hence his need to build a community. This community is a way to build a sense of hope and opportunity especially to young talents and children. The Kibera Fashion Week 2024 film screening was a show of consistency in the words and actions of David “Avido” Ochieng throughout the years.
Twenty per cent of every sale made by Lookslikeavido goes to the Avido Foundation to help with community empowerment projects and to educate bright students in the community.
Every designer, even the ones not talked about in depth here is well talented and most deserving of their place at the Kibera Fashion Week. On another day I might talk about each of them in broad. Apocalyptic Art Designs by Prius Ochieng, Nikongamani by Carlton Gandani and Bokka Atelier by Mariah Kwamboka were my top three favorites.
