Fashion Institute is about creating sustainable fashion projects and properties that add considerable value to designers and sponsors that support us. From identifying talent early on, and working through providing platforms that use international best practice, and realistic objectives, we aim to be instrumental in the next generation of fashion designers and fashion weeks.
Designers:
For designers, Fashion Institute provides a range of focussed, specific, world class platforms in the form of various fashion weeks, events and development programmes. By partnering with the best in the industry, with clear cut objectives, structures and transparent decision making processes, we’re able to provide unparalleled support, mentorship and channels for designers to thrive within South Africa, Africa and potential international markets.
To really provide specific, realistic platforms, we need to identify where a designer is at, in terms of the stage of their label. This ensures that Fashion Institute is the first platform owner on the African continent to genuinely create programmes within our events to best facilitate the designer at every stage of their business:
Student / Young Designers:
Each year, across all our platforms, we identify designers that are still at tertiary level, or recently graduated. These designers are supported through our development programmes that allow them to get show funding for a range, mentorship with established / top designers within their speciality, and promotion through our showing platforms, with the help of dedicated PR, marketing and business support services.
Emerging Designers:
Our Emerging Designers programme is the middle step for younger, or up-coming designers that may already be supplying smaller quantities and wish to scale their business, or need to get assistance in growing their brand or label. Our showing platforms work on creating the image, media and PR cycle, and then move onto leveraging this to increase consumer demand for the designer, which in turn allows for greater production runs, or more stockists. The final step in this part is introduction / assistance with our business partners to ensure that these Emerging Designers are correctly running their businesses by ensuring education on things like tax, company registration, distribution, etc.
Established / Top Tier Designers:
Our premium designer members are those that simply require the platform to showcase their ranges to the media, and also make use of our buyers salons, as well as partner fashion weeks or events internationally to markets that they may wish to export to. Our designers in this category already have successful, profitable businesses, and for the large part have manufacturing, retail and business segments developed. We do however offer full media, PR, business and specialist consulting partner opportunities if required.
Sponsors and Partners:
Fashion Institute believes in on-going, long term sponsorship or partnership agreements. We strive to exceed all deliverables, and work closely with those choosing to back us, or our fashion event platforms, because we feel that real value is only derived from relationships that build on achievements year after year.
Sponsors:
Our fashion week style events, such as SA Menswear Week, Cape Town Swimwear Week or Couture Weekend are simply not possible without the support of title sponsors, associate sponsors and supplier sponsors. The astronomical cost of developing, managing, staging and hosting these platforms requires millions of Rands annually, and must then still retain a small amount of money to keep the events funded throughout the year for the teams that work on development, admin, creative and marketing the platform for the next event.
We are always looking to engage with sponsors for these platforms. If your brand or company wishes to discuss how we can tailor a solution for you, please contact us and one of our team will be in touch within 12 hours.
Partners:
Creating a lasting legacy within fashion means that our designers require the necessary support from starting out to eventually exporting or growing their brands through retail presence. Our partners fund a range of programmes that allow us to develop programmes to support our member designers that show on our platforms. This is not entertainment, but a business decision for designers, and our partners which include banks, legal and accounting firms, as well as software, manufacturing, PR and marketing companies enable us to develop each designer or provide the support when it’s required.