By Fiorella Bafundo
African designers from many nations such as Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania showed their designs in the Fashion for Peace festival, organized by a nonprofit group called Festival for African Fashion and Arts. The celebration was the second to take place in the Nairobi National Park in Kenya, as it was also celebrated last year to react against the violence that took place in Kenya after the elections in December, 2007, where more than 1.000 people were killed and many more displaced from their homes, mainly because of ethnic conflicts.
Beside that horrible episode which gave birth to this fashion festival, as the situation in Kenya has gotten better and they enjoy a relatively peace environment, this year the festival was more aimed at promoting Kenyan and African fashion than giving speeches for peace, even though that keeps being the main message. One of the organizers, Lara Mastropasqua, said that “establishing a fashion industry in Kenya could create local jobs that would service the global fashion market,” appointing the potential African designers have but that cannot exploit in their countries because of lack of resources of the common population which cannot afford the price of designer clothes. In that sense, she said the goal is to call international attention because “if Africans were to reinvest in their culture, there could actually be an entire industry that could develop." Furthermore, she claimed “big-label designers draw inspiration from Africa without giving the continent credit.”
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