19/12/2017
AFWA 2018 - 'Coming to the Netherlands...?'
I long hesitated to write this editorial about the upcoming event Africa Fashion Week Amsterdam 2018 (AFWA 2018 for short). According to Facebook announcements by AFWA we will see such an event from August 23 2018 until August 25 2018. According to AFWA's FB page the event attracts already an interested crowd of more than 6000 people, while 584 are reported as actually attending the event. That is an amazing result as AFWA 2017 had been canceled (or postponed) in 2017 and the whole online infrastructure seems to be lacking in major ways (a designer who posts his desire to attend is being sent to an empty registration page (registration-2-2/). So what is the fuzz about?
A recap: in December 2016 the AFWA team announces the upcoming AFWA 2017 event to be held from 23-27 August 2017. As enthusiastic as they are about their former AFWA's successes, AFWA already expresses an interest in organizing fashion shows abroad (like Brussels and Malabo). In July a request made by Amie's Boutique to interview Mrs. Tambe, director of AFWA, gets denied due 'to the rebranding' of AFWA. And on August 9 an AFWA press release bluntly states that new dates for the event (previously aptly named 'Substance of things unseen'...) have been set in 2018, and that this release is just a confirmation of this reschedule. Followed by a press release of August 26 stating that the AFWA fashion show 'has been carried over to August 2018 to avoid the confusion due to foreseen circumstances in relation to a copyright infringement at strategic level'. WTF? I can remember how confused I was at the time about the reschedule. What did I miss? Well, what I missed - or dismissed really - were the numerous press releases about that 'sister'-event, the Tozali AFCW fashion event in July 2017 in Abuja, Nigeria. During the first half of 2017 AFWA got really involved with the organization of the Tozali event, up to the point that when the Tozali fashion show had to be delayed from July to September 2017 the AFWA 2017 show as a result also had to be pushed back, to the year 2018. No need to talk nonsense about copyright infringement at strategic level, the AFWA, that is: the AFW Amsterdam team, deemed a Nigerian show more interesting.
Now, this is all history. And this year we will see the postponed 2017 show. We will, won't we? Well, the AFWA show has been announced for August 2018. But the majority of AFWA's posts this year deal with another show, the 7th edition of the AFCW Malabo show in Equatorial Guinea to be held in the first week of October right after the AFWAmsterdam show. So, no news about the AFWA 2018 show? Well, if you dig deep enough, in an article on the upcoming Malabo annual campaign shoot (without much detail as 'it is not permitted for the post strategic information to be disclosed at this time') we are informed that the AFWA team just completed successfully the annual campaign shoot for the AFWA 2018 show. Thumbs up!
So, are we clear now? Maybe yes, maybe no. Obviously there is a lot going on behind the scene, but the AFWA team does not seem to value transparency too much. A second request by Amie's Boutique for an interview got denied by AFWA as well because they 'can not do any interviews at this strategic level'. And this is a quote of AFWA on an interview on Equatorial television about the Malabo show: 'This is how I position myself when Television Equatorial Guinea (TVGE) is trying to get Post Strategic Information off me .. I give nothing away with many words' (is it coincidence that there is literally no sound with the video?).
To round it all up: the African fashion minded community in the Netherlands would be well served by a well organized African fashion show here in the Netherlands. Is it too much to ask that AFWA focuses foremost on the Netherlands itself. Can we do away with the bewildering proliferation of organizational acronyms like AFWA, AFWC, AFW Netherlands, AFW Europe, etc (with the added bonus of a lesser likelihood of 'copyright infringement'). And lastly can the AFWA be more open and transparent towards its customer base. For its annual campaign shoot AFWA handpicked the parties that are to be the key players of the event. What are the selection criteria to be included in next year's edition. That means doing away with the secrecy surrounding the 'strategic' level, whatever that may mean. But then again to quote AFWA who quotes Karl Lagerfeld: 'don’t get carried away, it’s only dresses'.
