Kenya's Thriving Fashion industry

Growth and development is one of the greatest expectations that we have in life. We don’t desire to stagnate or dwell on one level. As a developing country, Kenya has come a long way on many fronts, and we have seen the fruit of those who have been laboring without rest in various industries. One of these is the fashion industry. This is from using animal skin as clothes, to lapping khangas, imported second hand clothes to having our own thriving fashion industry.

Some years back fashion design was not offered in many colleges and it was a rear course to take on. Actually, parents would take their daughters to the local tailoring store for classes. When this was introduced in different colleges, most parents didn’t see the importance of it, since they desired to have their children do a more ‘honorable job’ than this.

However, we have seen it rise slowly by slowly and people have come to embrace it. It has been good to have designers who are not borrowing designs from outside the country but coming up with theirs. The media has been helpful by airing fashion shows from different designers and fashion houses that we have in Kenya national televisions. This has created much awareness and most people like it.

The number of fashion designers is increasing day by day. Most Kenyan women who had done tailoring course back in those days are also joining colleges to help catch up with the latest way of making clothes even as they mentor the young people. The combination of these two have worked well and brought a whole difference in how people dress in Kenya.

The fashion industry has many challenges such as lack of fabric in every Kenyan woman, but they are conquering one by one. This is because the fabric manufacturers are very few and also the getting the fabrics from outside has not been easy especially for the upcoming designers. Capital is a key thing in any business and most people throw down their creative designing mind due to lack of it.

#RebeccaMichael