- Title: Meet Kenya's budding costume designer
- Date: 5th September 2018
- Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) SCOLA NAMWAI, COSTUME DESIGNER SAYING: "I feel that we are not taking the initiative we need to take to run a business, we are talented but at the end of the day, everybody else has talent so how do you set yourself apart from the next person? How do you market yourself? How do you set your margins? It all depends on
- Embargoed: 19th September 2018 16:13
- Keywords: Scola Namwai costume designer fashion inspiration
- Location: NAIROBI, KENYA/ UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS
- City: NAIROBI, KENYA/ UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS
- Country: Kenya
- Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Fashion
- Reuters ID: LVA0058WCOH1Z
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Scola Namwai is a costume designer in Nairobi, Kenya that is hoping to change the way people look at fashion in the east African country.
The 28-year-old says her ideas come from real stories and fantasy.
Namwai creates intricate costumes for special occasions, theatre performances and most recently, film.
"Most of the things I make, I basically do it from scratch, I paint, I design my prints and I paint some of them. It's is very personal and everything has an inspiration. I do not wake up in the morning and copy designs from fashion 101 or magazines. I always have an inspiration for everything I make and there is a story behind every design," said Scola.
This particular dress was inspired by environmentalist and Nobel Prize Laureate, Wangari Maathai and her love for nature.
It was chosen as one of the looks for the top 40 contestants of the Miss World pageant in 2016.
"She (Maathai) loves trees so much that every time she was in the mood to celebrate she would plant a new tree. And she would not just plant any tree she would plant a tree called the Nandi Flame. The Nandi Flame is an indigenous tree which has this beautiful red, orange, yellowish flowers that when the tree is in flower, it's in flame. So that's where I got my inspiration, so I called my collection the flower of the Nandi Flame which is inspired by Wangari Maathai and so, that's the story behind the dresses that I made and if you were to look at the dresses they look like fire," said Scola.
Namwai's latest project was leading the costume design team for award winning Kenyan film, Supa Modo - a story about a terminally ill girl whose only escape is her dream of being a super hero.
There are a number of costume designers in Kenya, which has a vibrant, up and coming film industry, but opportunities to create unique looks for whimsical storylines are not widely available.
For Namwai, working on the film was a childhood dream come true.
"I was searching myself and trying to find out what I really liked or what I really wanted to do and I was always into fashion in high school, I loved modelling, I loved creating designs from t-shirts and fabric at home. My mum was a seamstress and every time after school we would go to where she was training as a dressmaker and I would collect pieces of fabric in the market and make dresses for my doll," she said.
Namwai is planning to go to business school in Europe to learn more about the art as a sustainable enterprise.
Making the work profitable, she says, has been the biggest challenge, not just for her but other designers too.
"I feel that we are not taking the initiative we need to take to run a business, we are talented but at the end of the day, everybody else has talent so how do you set yourself apart from the next person? How do you market yourself? How do you set your margins? It all depends on us designers because there are designers making it here. Why aren't the rest of us making it big?"
Namwai says her designs are not just clothes, they are art. Asked who she looks up to in the global costume design space, she said, Guo Pei - the Chinese designer famous for making Rihanna's 2015 Met Gala Omelet dress. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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