Design is Their Mission: Fish, Bread, and Books
Tekasala and Shunnoz pose in front of the skyline (Goethe-Institut/Rui Tavares)
10 April 2012
“We are trained fashion designers before we’re born,” Shunnoz and Tekasala observe. “God sends us to earth to die for it.” The young Goethe-Institut in Angola is collaborating with these two extravagant designers. By Miguel Hurst
To create fashion for the body, heart, and soul is the declared mission of the two young Angolan fashion designers Shunnoz and Tekasala. When they began their fashion line about eight years ago they wished to actively take part in Angola’s human and spiritual reconstruction. They understand fashion as a means of communicating ideas.
Work with unusual colour combinations, atypical proportions and cuts make the two couturiers’ creations a festival of colour, rhythm, joy, and energy. Courage, provocation, restlessness, and the moment of surprise are characteristic of their performance-like fashion shows, which address all of the senses of their audience. Music, scene-like elements, staged barbecues, fish, bread, and books flank the models and free minds for something new.
Photo gallery: Art in the public space
The primary concerns of the two creative minds are harmony, developing ideas, stimulating people to a new, multicultural kind of thinking, and the search for positive social values that could help bring a fragmented society forward. For them, acceptance of new ideas and products is the essence of social progress.
Shunnoz and Tekasala are two promising hopes in the creative mosaic of Angola, where new ideas combine with traditions in transition, and where work is being done on renewal with zest, vigour, and energy.
This article was taken from the new issue of the Goethe-Magazin. You can discover even more exciting reports, backgrounds, and interviews on the subject in “Luanda leuchtet – Angola im Aufbruch”.
