For me this topic is extremely important!

I constantly hear people saying that they do not want to purchase African ready-to-wear as the sizing is never accurate. People complain and say ‘’I would rather go to a tailor, so the fit is perfect!’’(why don’t you do that instead of going to H&M as well ?!)

It is no lie that there is a huge sizing problem within African ready-to-wear. Research findings in Africa indicate that contemporary apparel sizing is inadequate in providing African women with an acceptable quality of fit.

I think the major problem is that ready-to-wear apparel is designed to fit women in the Western ideal body shape, and there is no fit curve and size chart available that correspond to Africans or even regions in Africa as western has for EU, Fr or the UK. An apparel sizing system consists of a series of size charts, with each size chart designed to serve the apparel sizing requirements of each body shape category found within the population. Thus, it is important that we have more studies about the different shapes existing in our countries so we can have our own size chart too!

Apparel sizing systems guide apparel manufacturers in terms of the sizing and proportioning of ready-to-wear apparel, with the aim of providing the majority of consumers whose precise body measurements are not known, as well as a well-fitted garment which in actual fact is not made to fit perfectly. If made perfectly being named ‘’ready-to-wear’’ would not be appropriate, however ‘’Made-to-measure’’ would. This is why I often tell people to be more tolerant.

Moreover, Africa consists of a lot of self-educated individuals.

Most of the sewers learn and gain their knowledge of sewing in the streets, this is merely because there are no institutions or fashion schools available, and if there are, most of them are design schools which isn’t really as beneficial. In my opinion, we have a heap of designers which is great but we need more fashion engineers in order to build a sustainable industry. Fashion would only be a driver of the economy if we have a real industry. If we have more schools that teach people how to make patterns or use software programs like Gerber or Lectra we won’t only create a sustainable industry but also value a job which is low-rated today in Africa and create a massive amount jobs.

Today, sewers need to understand that their ingenuity and their natural gift is not enough in order to build a profitable industry.

I want to share with you a small anecdote of when I was working in a factory in Benin. My company role was to provide support in West Africa to become a factory align with international and ethical standards and become profitable. So, we had to work with them, understand how they work and how we can implement international production standards. One of them was to teach the pattern maker the importance of making a paper pattern instead of drawing patterns directly onto the fabric. That was a big deal, because by doing that we would allow the factory to work like a real one and therefore be productive and profitable in the long-term. However, the pattern maker disagreed because he was used to creating his patterns that way and could not understand why he had to change his method. He then came to the conclusion of leaving the company as it was too much of a change for him and he was not willing to learn.

Here is the problem, we cannot want and deem African fashion as the driver of the economy if we ourselves do not generate real schools and value all types of jobs involved within this.

Thus, let’s not neglect our designers and ready-to-wear brands, they are doing only what they are able to do with what they have and it is a big challenge. We should be more tolerant and united. The more customers they have the greater their space and place of work would then be which will then allow the government to be supportive. Just look at Ethiopia, because the government is supporting the fashion industry, the demand is increasing and the industry is profitable as well.

Africa fashion is not just these great and amazing catwalks and fashion weeks in the big cities of Africa. Africa fashion represents hands, workers etc.. who make everything possible with what they are given and need more resources to become even better and greater than where they are now.