Kenyan fashion events wanting

You have got to love the Met Gala. Well, I know I do! Every year, it grows into this … thing. When @ngugimuthoni tweeted asking me “Wow! everyone pushing boundaries at #MetGala when will Nairobi fashion/ awards season get to this level? I’m ready!” So am I! Except, we are so not there yet. For many, many reasons.

This year’s has to be my favourite Met Gala yet. The theme, avant-garde. Built around a single living fashion designer, Rei Kawakubo, 74, head designer and founder Commes de Garçon (pronounced comb-day garc-SAWN), French for “like some boys.” Made in Tokyo, Japan, and based out of Paris and Tokyo, Kawakubo’s eye, that is her aesthetic is described as anti-fashion.

Kawakubo’s are more performance and art than fashion shows which Vogue US say elicits “wild applause, even tears to bewilderment bordering on annoyance.” Fashion, to her, need not be flattering hence the very, very weird. Then again she has collaborated with Nike and Speedo. CDG, nay, Kawakubo, is presently, and reluctantly, exhibiting at the Museum Metropolitan of Art Costume Institute.

Her work is audacious, raw, unrelenting, asymmetrical, deconstructed (taken apart for examination), poetic, eccentric, original, with an outsized imagination. Her Motorbike Collection introduced an inexplicable blend of tutus and leather. Her fragrances are asexual, rather, non gendered. CDG does womenswear and menswear.

WHO IN KENYA

Fiercely reclusive, she is married to Joffe, relevant as he is president of CDG and her translator. She lives in Tokyo, he in Paris, running Dover Street Market, her other label with five stores to date. Her own mysterious personal legend intrigues.

Kawakubo loves non-fabric fabric. Kendall’s Jenner La Perla outfit was an ode to her made with 85,000 crystals in 3 shades of black strung together by a single unbroken thread made over five cities taking 60 people hundreds of hours. Models wore blunt chopped heavy-fringed bobs. It is how she wears her hair.

Looks were borrowed intensely off CDGs collections over the years. Kawakubo makes most influential designer lists both the 20th and 21st century. How many local designers are willing to admit they are openly fans of each other? That they are, in fact, willing to admit to being inspired by another designer and go through such lengths to celebrate that influence?

Brands invite guests to the Met Gala. But before said invite is mailed, Anna Wintour must approve the list. When a brand invites you, you wear their stuff. You get an invite based on buzz, achievement, beauty. Money, despite a ticket being $30,000(Sh3.3 million) a pop, will not buy you entrance if you lack the sizzle.

It is not essential to dress according to the theme. But the whole world now knows if you do not, you look like an idiot crashing the wrong party. Besides, how often will fashion labels exclusively invite you and dress you in something magical, perverse, naughty, delightful, weirdly wonderful or incredibly insane?

Add to that the absence of social media posts once the red carpet is over. Guests are banned from doing so. And they pass through the retrospective. Keep in mind all this is a marketing opportunity for fashion labels, fundraising for future fashion insights. It is not simply a grand old party.

Before we turn it up obviously we have to ask ourselves if Kenyan red carpets are worth the exposure for our designers or just an opportunity to gawk at sights misunderstood for lack of context. How many brands would trust a red carpet alone to generate enough buzz without insisting on a hashtag and milking posting guests for every dollar they did not pay?

How many Kenyans are bold, daring, brave enough to face off with Lupita’s red carpet style? Hair and makeup trendsetters? Which businesses, corporations and companies are willing to sponsor high stakes experiences or fund a section of our museum? How clearly do media houses grasp the impact, value and reach of such opportunities? Anyone? No? Well then. I rest my case.