Fashion is Innocent’s first and most enduring love, as he explains that “it’s been twelve years since I first entered the industry. I was 20 or 21 when I attended my first fashion week – SA Fashion Week – it was right after high school and I was still trying to figure out what to do. I stumbled upon writing, and became a fashion journalist – I was at GQ, MTV Base, Industrie Africa – mostly companies that were based overseas but had an interest in connecting with African audiences. Writing was something I loved as a child.” After a decade as a fashion journalist, Innocent amassed a profound understanding of the strategic needs involved in brands and designers succeeding. Launching his company, Renoch Group, was the next step in broadening his ability to serve the fashion industry; “my pivot to PR happened in 2022. I felt like I had reached a ceiling and I wanted to find the next thing to turn my attention to. I had written about designers and African creatives – interviewing them, promoting them and telling their stories, but I began to see that there was a gap in brands needing more than just exposure. You need to sell, be featured in more publications, you need collaborations. I had some friends asking for my help in how to tell their story on social media. I don’t just do PR because I saw that brands needed wholesale management – publicity is one thing, but being able to sell is what happens. I offer a 360 degree service to help brands reach the next level.”
A lot has changed in a decade and Innocent has seen the spotlight on African fashion grow with tangibility. As he notes, there is a contrast between the interest in our landscape in just the last ten years, saying that “it’s been such an interesting progression. Ten years ago, we saw a lot of sporadic moments in African fashion – historically, there was momentary interest and people would say ‘Oh, look, there are African designers!’ – Now, there seems to be some real staying power and consistent momentum. I think it has a lot to do with social media and the success of other cultural expressions from the continent, with music genres like amapiano. There is this very interesting intercontinental, collaborative spirit that is happening – like a South African designer winning an award, or being able to showcase in Paris. We are definitely seeing a new age of African fashion developing.”
I ask Innocent what he believes is the defining factor in the shaping direction of African fashion? Innocent explains that truly, it is access, “I think designers all around the world have experienced this revolution in being so direct with their consumer, through social media. Previously, media was always the mediator between brands and their audiences; it was the power of magazines to tell brand stories. If an editor didn’t like your brand or know who you were, there was no access. Now, brands can build their own following and community, and really tell their own story in their own way. Magazines are still important, but I think we have seen the possibilities widen in Africa and around the world, from the digital revolution.” Social media has helped designers and creatives bypass traditional gatekeepers, with creators reclaiming narratives and contributing to a more authentic representation of African aesthetics and identities.
Innocent believes that African fashion can be understood as a dual influence and inseparable from its historical context, and that to fully grasp the essence of African fashion is to acknowledge its deep-rooted connections to history, culture, and the ongoing processes of decolonisation; as Innocent explains, “I like to distinguish African fashion this way; there is the original, pre-colonial African fashion which is mainly rooted in ceremonial dressing, and then there is the post-colonial, new age African fashion. That influence of colonialism is embedded in our fashion cultures across the continent, but the history, techniques, the dying, the beading – the fabrications – inform so many designers today. In the 1960s, when African countries began to get their independence, there was a huge movement in reclaiming their culture and we saw this in fashion, too. I think of Chris Seydou in Mali, a pioneer of African couture who built his design philosophy on the use of ‘mud cloth’ or Malian bogolan, or Oumou Sy in Senegal, the ‘Grand Dame of Dakar’. This was revolutionary at the time, to hybridise traditional techniques and tools through a modern lens. The designers that we see today are the inheritors of the work those designers pioneered from the 1960s.”
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