The Mozambique Fashion Week 2019 Highlighted The Need For Sustainability And Environmental Protection In Our World Today. Here Is How

Fashion shows play a huge role in the fashion industry and are held and organised in almost every part of the world for various reasons. With each fashion week comes a theme and a reason behind the show. In this column, we review past fashion shows to bring out interesting details you can learn from as a fashion entrepreneur. 

From the 5th to the 9th of December, 2019, the Vodacom Mozambique Fashion Week 2019, with the theme The Future is Africa, held at South Beach Maputo. The Fashion Week featured 3 different segments: The International, Pan African, and School and Kids segments. 

• The International segment featured collections by designers outside of the African fashion industry.
• The Pan African segment saw designers from all over the African continent come and showcase fashion in their different expressions. 
• The School and Kids segment had designers trained at the Vodacom Mozambique Fashion Week School showcase their creations, and also had designers in Children’s fashion bring the latest trends to the runway.

As part of the fashion week, the Mozambique Fashion Week launched the Unwanted Fashion campaign to draw society’s attention to the amount of litre that had been dumped along the country’s vast coastline. 

Theme

The theme, The Future is Africa, with a focus on sustainability and environmental protection felt right for the event. With African fashion designers showcasing ways in which local fabrics can be used to create just about anything, the event showed that African fashion cannot be boxed and is set to take over the future.

The displays in line with the Unwanted Fashion campaign, that stemmed from the fashion week, also drew attention to ways in which certain human activities are negatively impacting the environment. This part of the theme felt right as the fashion industry is tilting more towards sustainability and eco-friendly practices in its dealings. 

Responsiveness of Fashion lovers

Being the biggest fashion show in Mozambique and one of the biggest in Africa, the fashion show had both local and international guests of all ages in attendance.

Setup and Decor

The setup and decor of the Mozambique fashion week were unique and beautiful. While some of the setups were similar to what is seen in most fashion shows, like guests sitting on either side of the runway to watch the fashion show, others, like the introduction of a plane and some plastic bottles on the runway, were very different from the norm. 

With a big part of the theme of the fashion week focused on sustainability and environmental protection, the fashion week brought with it many sustainable practices in the way of decor. The catwalk for the event, for instance, was made from a total of 5,000 tiles which were made from 25,000 plastic bottle caps. 

As another move in the way of raising awareness about environmental protection, the fashion week featured exhibits of sculptures of marine animals and a 6-metre tree. All of these exhibits were made from recycled materials, like plastic bottles, and were illuminated with energy from solar panels. In all, more than 1 ton of plastic was used to build these exhibits. 

On 3 out of the 4 days that the Mozambique Fashion Week ran for, plastic bottles were used in place of screens at the head of the runway. These bottles were stacked on top of each other to form walls on either side of the mouth of the runway. This unique touch was beautiful and hard to ignore.

On day 2 of the fashion week, a plane sat at the head of the runway, and from it emerged the models to walk the runway. This brought a distinctive feel to the fashion show that we don’t get to see at most fashion shows.   

The Mozambique Fashion Week 2019 was one that boldly highlighted the issue of environmental pollution facing both the fashion industry and our world as a whole. It was a daring move and one that is very welcome in our world today.