What’s the secret to designing an award-winning fashion collection?

The Editor of Sunday Times Fashion Weekly gives his take on why WAKE won the #SAFW Renault New Talent Search competition

“Peculiar, progressive, intermixture” is how Pieter Burger and Carla Roos of WAKE summed up their Autumn/Winter 2015 collection prior to showing it at SA Fashion Week (SAFW). Since then, they can now add another word to the list: award-winning.

The young Jo’burg duo (pictured above), who won the SAFW Renault New Talent Search competition last week, say their interest in fashion was sparked by “the idea of creating something someone can wear”.

And it was, in part, the wearability of their collection – which featured a tactile mix of responsibly-sourced hides and black and white prints – that impressed Sunday Times Fashion Weekly Editior Tiaan Nagel.

“WAKE’s designs hit the perfect balance between being conceptual and being commercial,” says Nagel, who sat on the competition’s judging panel. 

“It's currently extremely difficult for any designer to make a decent living in South Africa, and so to not consider the viability of their designs would be short sighted,” Nagel continues. “Designers can’t afford to indulge purely in the editorial or artistic aspect of clothing design, or on the other hand, focus solely on the retail success of a product. 

“Wake considered both aspects: they didn’t compromise their artistic expression, yet still explored the reality of their product in context of the local market.”

Photographs: Simon Deiner / SDR Photo