Why Aren’t African Fashion Designers Capitalizing On Nose Masks During The #COVID19 Outbreak?

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Ghana

Insight & Advice

 

You would think it was a no-brainer, but unfortunately it is not. A worldwide global pandemic Covid-19 has viciously attacked Italy, USA and China and slowly making it’s way into Africa. Major international fashion brands have already capitalised on making nose masks with quality designs, giving African brands a head start to do the same as the virus has only picked up here, but no! It seems they are lacking behind.

It would have been all just so simply to have produced a fabric with ones logo on it, and even if one couldn’t capitalise on sales as most won’t expect to be buying such from a fashion brand, at least they could have been handed out free to former clients and staff and work places.

This would have automatically been a fabulous branding tool all whilst working towards the effort of saving lives. In fact designers should have been stumbling and fighting over each other to have proven who had the most creative or resourceful mask. However, this is not the case. With the exception of seeing one or two African print nose masks, there is not one African brand that has produced any such design. Meanwhile in the west Nose Masks Dominate The Runway during their fashion weeks.

Since we began blogging, one thing that has been consistent with African designers is their ability to close business after a few years. Maybe it’s because such opportunities are over looked. The concept of African print rose quickly into the spotlight with stars like Beyonce, Rihanna and more embracing it, whilst African designers sat back and neglected it because they didn’t want to limit their brands to being seen as ‘African’.

Now you have a booming world of African print dominated by Europeans and African Americans who took the golden opportunity to milk it. Maybe brands in Africa need to be more intuned with what is going on internationally and not just limit themselves to those that visit their stores. Let’s keep our eyes out for the first set of brands that actually connect with the audience and produce nose masks.