VIDA MAHIMBO - Unleashes her Dream “Kanga Jeans Collection” in African Fashion Week- NEW YORK.
KFG LTD- 15th July 2010- Announces the Launch of “African Queen Kanga Jeans”
A hot wind blows in New York. It comes from Africa. It doesn’t however bring sultry equatorial temperatures, but the seeds of new ideas. Vida Mahimbo comes from the slopes of the Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with her collection of Kanga Jeans and a story of synergies between antique and modern, and west and south of the world.
She grew up in the midst of her mother’s looms, listening to the stories her father told when returning from his overseas job as a textile engineer. From this, even when still young, came a personal elaboration of the traditions of her homeland and technological innovations in order to dress the woman of the New Millennium.
After graduating in Business Administration and Marketing at Dar es Salaam, convinced that economic planning is an indispensable requisite for an African stylist, Vida finally created the Karisma Fashion Group, an Italian/Tanzanian business that unites African creativity and the high quality of Italian fabrics. Colours, designs, symbols inspired by Masai culture, combined with forms that reject the sanctioned idea of an ethereal female and proudly show the beauty of real, live bodies, have crossed the confines of Africa and landed in Monte Carlo and Paris boutiques. Yesterday.
Today Vida Mahimbo has chosen New York, ideal melting pot capital, to present her latest collection of jeans and tops, result of a long stylistic research and her project to take Africa to the world through fashion. Therefore the heart of her collection is the desire to develop a cultural message made of graphic design and innovative sartorial solutions. In fact, Vida has combined the the most fashionable international garment, jeans, with kanga, typical East African garments. A kanga is a large rectangle of cotton printed with symbolic designs and traditional proverbs, bound in pairs on body and hips of both men and women. They’re not just simple clothing, nor only ornamental, but real iconographic media used for centuries to communicate messages to the community.
Vida has collected them, studied them as if they were works of art, cutting them, and finally assembling them with slightly elasticized pure cotton jeans. They wrap a proud body without constraints, as African women have always known how to do. The result is a crossover of two cultures that only apparently speak different languages, and that harmonize in sensuous pants, in fashionable colours that are capable, through cleverly placed openings, to reveal the antique female soul.
They are combined with essential shaped tops and t-shirts, printed with stylized designs inspired by Masai colours and symbols. Pure geometric lines that resemble European abstract art, also influenced by tribal cultures. Cross references that has almost become a trademark that reminds the world of our roots, and women from all countries that beauty is hidden deeply inside them all, simple and strong. A glance is enough to free it. African Queens in Kanga Jeans.
For more Details: Please contact: www.kangajeans.com or www.vidamahimbo.com.
