Style Out of Africa

Such practices allow these designers to tap into the popular Fair Trade label, which motivates some consumers to spend more for the sake of ensuring their products are sweatshop-free. The Fair Trade often helps young designers make it onto store shelves in the first place, since it allows many retailers to charge more for their wares. It is another reason retailers and fashion houses are looking to foreign producers that offer the kinds of goods people will want to buy with their red American Express cards.

Some designers got into the business accidentally. When former model Elizabeth Warner came to Kenya from Los Angeles a few years ago to run an ecotourism camp that shares profits with the local community, she befriended a group of talented Masai beaders desperate for an income. "Their artistry is so beautiful and so unique because of their remote location, I saw it as truly one-of-a-kind opportunity," she says. So she cofounded Masai Collections, which now sells hand-beaded bags to Donna Karan, Henry Beguelin and several boutiques in New York's Soho district. Accessories designer Annabelle Thom says her bush-girl instincts for efficiency and conservation helped her become a successful businesswoman, using fine leathers and animal skins to make bags and slippers, which now fill magazines and boutiques from East London to Brooklyn.

Africa's designers are also benefiting from the continent's celebrity appeal. The rich and famous continue to flock there, bolstering sales as well as international reputations. Warner and Kapusia outfitted former president Bill Clinton with leather beaded bags and bejeweled gold bangle bracelets on his recent trip to Africa, and helped get Hillary and Chelsea fashion-ready for the new season. Pakistani-born Nairobi-based designer Sally Dudmesh has met with dozens of celebrities, enticing them not just with amulets collected from Tibetan monks and Egyptian tombs but with gems carved from the floor of the Great Rift Valley. "Each piece has a story, a history," says Dudmesh. "It's what makes it unique." It's also what makes it cost $3,000. And as Africa's designers are finding, that's money well spent to benefit the whole continent.

© 2007