The event will be held on April 30 at the Thapong Visual Arts from 5pm-11pm. It will be Modern Tswana Fashion Week Investments’ ninth fashion event since their establishment in 2017. In an interview with the founder of Modern Tswana Fashion Week Investments, Nchidzi James Chikumo, he explained that the Battle of Designers will host a competition for designers who will compete by dressing fashion models on the runway. He also said they have already hosted fashion-modeling workshops, which were attended by more than 100 fashion aspiring models, both males and females. “The designers will compete for cash prizes and other awesome vouchers.

Modern Tswana Fashion Week: The Battle of Designers will also host an exhibition for the arts and other creative industries to showcase their products or services to our audience and over 10,000 social media followers.

The event’s objective of Modern Tswana Fashion Week is to ensure that we develop and enhance designers’ creativity through a competitive platform that will challenge them to be more creative and think outside the box,” he explained. He further pointed out that the event will target new and established fashion designers so as to intensify the competitive spirit within the industry.

Chikumo also said the event was also for designers all over Botswana adding that both start-ups and established designers were welcome to join.

She stated that they intended to showcase Botswana’s fashion design creativity to their audience through the outfits made by the designers and fashion models. Chikumo added that they intend to unlock the designers’ next level creativity, which they could use in their daily work after the event.

Modern Tswana Fashion Week is aimed at promoting designers and fashion models and also get the designers closer to their target market. “We will also host an exhibition.

Modern Tswana Fashion Week will see different sectors of the industry of Botswana showcase and sell their products to our 250 event attendees.

Exhibitors will also get a chance to market their brands to our online social media platforms, which reach over 26,000 online users per week. The fear of COVID-19 is still around, which affects our tickets sales but we plan to have COVID-19 protocols to ensure the safety of our event attendees,” he added.

Chikomu said finding sponsors has been a minor setback since most businesses are still trying to recover from the effects of COVID-19. Furthermore, he explained that Battle of Designers will be hosted annually during the months April/May.

He added that they planed to expand to countries like South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and many others since their events were doing well.

However, he said the fashion industry in Botswana has a long way to show growth and more creativity, which is why the Battle of Designers was conceived. He said the event will bring competition and push for growth of the fashion industry in Botswana as the industry was growing but at a very slow pace.

He explained that the fact that most of the material is imported made it very expensive for most Batswana designers, by so doing limiting creativity and access to the latest clothing materials.

To grow the local fashion industry, he said there is need for local fashion designers to start competing among themselves and take part in outside borders fashion events to keep up with the fast-changing industry trends.

Chikomu said they had Sparkle Designs who are very good and skilled in creating fashion outfits and accessories, KC-H Bespoke Couture Creators for all occasions, and also have couture outfits for hire, Connie Couture who is start-up designer schooling at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology and focuses on outfits you worn on a daily basis and Joe en NoNo Clothing and Upper Designs to name a few.

The event has tickets ranging from P200 to P350. The P250 standard ticket comes with a free cocktail (alcoholic or non alcoholic); the P200 student ticket includes a free beverage and the P350 VIP Ticket comes with a full meal and a beverage of choice. Modern Tswana Fashion Week Investments is dedicated to organising themed fashion events like fashion shows, fashion promotional activities and also fashion promotional campaigns.

All tickets for Modern Tswana Fashion Week are available at the WebTickets kiosk in Riverwalk Mall, Gaborone and all Spar supermarkets in Gaborone and Pik ’n Pay supermarkets. Tickets can also be found online at www. WebTickets.co.bw