PHOTO: MARC DE BOISROLIN
Nelson Mandela Bay designer Gugu Peteni has earned a stylish seat at the exclusive fashion table after winning an award at Paris Haute Couture Week in June.
The Africa Fashion Up (AFUP) 2024 competition, organised by Share Africa under the patronage of French President Emmanuel Macron, aims to support emerging African designers and redefine the fashion industry.
AFUP is the first major Parisian event dedicated to contemporary African fashion, and it presented the work of four African designers, drawn from 200 applicants across the continent, at Paris Fashion Week.
It invited Nelson Mandela University Fashion and Textile Design graduate Peteni, 29, to show her Gugubygugu spring-summer collection.
Peteni also won the Best Young Designer Award on June 26 in a ceremony held in the Quai Branly- Jacques Chirac Museum.
“It’s so surreal! Amazing! As designers we all dream of being a luxury fashion space, in Paris, so this was a dream come true,” said Peteni on her return in July.
Her prize includes international development support from the elite HEC Paris business school and luxury fashion line Balenciaga, as well as retail exposure through Galeries Lafayette, the biggest chain of up-market department stores in Europe.
Following the show, a pop-up store opened at Galeries Lafayette Paris Haussmann, where designers could sell their creations to an international clientele.
Peteni spent a week in Paris and now will complete the rest of the programme online.
For the French foray, she presented the new Gugubygugu collection, Echoes of Self SS25, which integrates South African mohair and Merino wool.
For this range, Peteni worked with Leo SZN Consulting, using shoes from Europa Art and jewellery from e.g.jewellery.
EASTERN CAPE BORN-AND-BRED
“Mohair South Africa really opened the door for me, and sustainability became a crucial part of how I design,” she said. “I love working with mohair, once you touch and feel it you don’t really want to work with synthetics any more.”
Along with another international award-winning South African designer Laduma Ngxokolo, Peteni learnt the intricacies of machine knitting this diamond fibre while studying at Nelson Mandela University’s Fashion and Textile Design School in Gqeberha.
“I had the same teacher as Laduma: Retha Giliomee. She was wonderful, and she taught me all that I know of how to use knitting machines,” Peteni said.
“When I started my studies I knew nothing, only that ‘the Devil wears Prada’, and that I wanted to sit in the front row.
It was quite a reality check! They really did prepare us for industry, though, as hard work was ingrained in us.”
The Eastern Cape born-and-bred designer moved to Pretoria in 2023 to be closer to the fashion industry.
However, she could not get much closer to the cutting edge than showing her collection at Paris Fashion Week and rubbing shoulders with the elite of the style world.
Peteni also – literally – secured her seat at the table at an exclusive gala dinner held after the ramp showings.
“There were so many famous people like actors and musicians and we [the four African designers] were seated at the same table as the sponsors and businesses,” she said.
Her compatriots were fellow South African designer Rich Mnisi, who is already an established name in the fashion industry, Mohamed Youss from Morocco, and Kadiata Diallo from Senegal and
Mauritania.
