The Difference Between African Fashion Designers And Print Tailors

The demand for print is forever growing with tremendous support. Support that stems from hundreds of Africans feeling fashionable by wearing what is tailored and made in their own home country, and why shouldn’t we? Due to this, there is a great rise in the number of people entering the world of design. If there is a market and one can provide a service to fulfill another demand, we can only give thumbs up and encourage more economic growth.

Although, in the midst of such high demands and the patriotic essence of wearing print clothing, many are simply confusing designing with tailoring and print overlaying. One can not simply buy fabric, cut it into a skirt and claim the title, designer. Nor can they sew it into a pair of trousers or boxers and acquire the designer title. A designer is one who creates an outfit with a unique style, be it on the shoulders, or an interesting unique bodice design, patterned embroidery, maybe interesting buckles, beads or funky laces on the shoes.

Despite a designers fashion influences, they will sit and create unique fashion styles that had never existed before. This is what we call a designer, whether they are in the business of African prints or not. The word tailor is not exempt from the title designer, nevertheless, if you are making and sewing clothes outside of any unique creative process then you are simply a tailor or a person who overlays shoes with print, not sure if there is a unique title for the latter.

This does not undermine any tailors and such, there is a high demand for print and simply print, and FashionGHANA.com is soon to bring you a whole host of print shoes and bags, some of which may fall into this category. But there is a slight confusion when one uses the title designer for simply remaking what others have created through their own unique process. That is the equivalent of singing a song over the same instrumental but giving it a different title and then calling yourself an artist. You may be a singer, but definitely not an artist.

The terminology is often being misused, and many simply being credited the title designer for only remaking designs due to using “African” prints. What even cuts across the board is some that misuse the title designer does not even clue up on the work of local designers, the flow of society, nor the work of mainstream designers, and have almost no idea of the state of fashion in the industry.

It is agreeable most “African” print fabrics are already made with sewn or dyed patterns, and in many situations, they may play a part in creating a vision or look on a dress or shoe that may seem as though it is a creative design when the truth is it is simply a remake of a normal clothing item. FashionGHANA.com works with a few tailors and even retails some of their items in our boutique. So we surely have no problem with print remaking. But one must keep a lookout for when the word fashion designer is used loosely.