10 Reasons Why You Can’t Trust Mainstream Coverage Of African Fashion: Racism Is Number 8, See Others

Let’s face it, if there is one trend all fashion blogs, websites and media should acknowledge that is internationally in action, that should be African fashion judging by the international movement going on around the world. However, Africa is not a country nor village with a group of people, it is a vast continent with millions and thousands of cultures and styles.

Yet what we do know is there are certain and some general attributes of fashion from a number of countries in Africa that is making waves. And as time goes this might even broaden up with specific detailed fashion from sectors, cultures and styles of Africa.

The concept of African fashion is everywhere. An African fashion week in many Western countries. If not a fashion week, some sort of yearly fashion expose, and they never fail to attract guests nor sales. Many of the top western designers have at some what embraced these attributes. And whether belonging to Africa or not, the fact is that Africa or African culture set the term for these attributes to be fashionable.

Over the years we realized our website FashionGHANA has been a window to many mainstream websites. Even when stories or article concepts were not taken from our site, some figures or stories only got covered by the mainstream after our coverage. There is nothing wrong with this, that’s the basic process of journalism.

However, the reason is because, despite Beyonce’s embracing of print and African culture, Chris Browns numerous times of wearing Angelina/Dashiki shirts, and Mrs Obama’s wearing of Maki Oh’s outfits, Mainstream media has never really gotten the grasp of decent coverage of African fashion and here are the reasons why…..[/tps_header]

1/ FASHION BUSINESS IS STILL DEVELOPING IN AFRICA

As fancy as African fashion is, designers are not really raking in as much as you think. In Ghana for example, one can count the number of designers that actually have a pr agent. Yes the fashion is here, the creativity is here, the tailors are here and the clients are here. But the qualified business managers aren’t, the lawyers aren’t, the pr agents are rare or only just about learning what they are doing, the concept of business is new. If “The Top Magazine” doesn’t call the designer, the probably will never hear of them. Therefore not only is mainstream media is usually left out the loop, but they are subjected to publishing the only few emails they received regarding what is going on, plus the concept of designer ads online are very few. This is a mixture of lack of finances, recourse, talents and a hardcore sector of business and pr professionals doesn’t help aid the bridge between fashionista and the outside world.