Fashion

The year 2021 didn’t get off to a great start, to say the least. The Covid-19 pandemic had already brought the world as we knew it to a standstill, and this year – once again – fashion weeks from London to New York were struck from calendars in the same of social distancing. But nevertheless, fashion has always known how to adapt. A new-found focus on inclusive casting and sustainable processes has been the result. FRANCE 24 takes a look back at some of the year's fashion highlights.

Ghanaians love fashion and the 2021 edition of ‘Rythyms on da Runway" featured the work of hot young designers in the capital Accra, despite the blow that COVID has dealt the industry.

Khadija Abdallah and Layla Said know how to turn waste into something beautiful. The activists from Zanzibar use everything they find on the beach to create interior decor. Their goal: to teach girls to make a living out of what life offers them.

The death of Black designer Virgil Abloh at the age of just 41 has served as a reminder that fashion still has a way to go when it comes to diversity. Abloh, an African American, studied civil engineering and architecture, but was increasingly drawn to the world of music and later set up his own streetwear label, Off White. In 2018 he was named head of menswear at Louis Vuitton, becoming the first Black man to become the lead designer of a major French fashion house. For Abloh, fashion was inherently political; a means of furthering the fight against racism. We took a closer look at his legacy.

No three-piece suits, no dress shoes, no ties. Instead, Germany's new leaders appear in sneakers and unbuttoned shirts. A change in style that also symbolizes a new attitude.

Fashion giants H&M and Zara are producing eco-collections that claim to reduce the negative aspects of fast fashion. Their brands, they say, are becoming more sustainable. But is it true? Or is it just greenwashing?

The reigning "Miss Universe", Andrea Meza of Mexico, toured Jerusalem's Old City on Wednesday in preparation for Israel hosting the Miss Universe 2021 pageant next month. Meza visited Christianity's most sacred church, the Holy Sepulchre, and Judaism's holiest prayer site, the Western Wall. She told media she hoped for a solution to the conflict in the region. This year's Miss Universe competition will be held in the Israeli port city of Eilat on December 12.

Sao Paulo's Fashion week -edition 52- stretched into Wednesday featuring designs based on fashion in the popular mobile-based game "Free Fire."

Today, the fashion industry is increasingly waking up to the importance of acknowledging the full range of human experience in the clothes and messaging it puts out. Inclusion is in fashion and it's taking many exciting forms, from a catwalk show for amputees in Paris to a show by Parisian label Victoria/Tomas that uses the designers' mums as models, via a project that helps migrants pursue careers in textiles in France. FRANCE 24 brings you a round-up.

After almost two years of empty catwalks, summer 2022's ready-to-wear collections were finally able to be shown in public, and designers rose to the occasion. Yohji Yamamoto's collection was all about the perils of climate change. But the standout feature of this season is an approach to fashion that privileges the female gaze, with Marine Serre, Dior and Isabel Marant all presenting clothes designed to be worn by women and enjoyed by women – rather than having men looking at them!

Between the frenzied rush of wardrobe changes and photographers readying for shoots, Iman Eldeeb's agency is slowly breaking new ground for Egypt's fashion scene by hiring a diverse line-up of models.

In a hot and stuffy room at her house in Hanoi, Tran Thanh Thuc holds up a delicate silk scarf and begins snipping it into tiny pieces, ready to paste onto her works of art. For four decades, Thuc has been recreating Vietnamese landscapes using vibrant shades of fabric cut from scarves, traditional ao dai -- or whatever material she could find during years of poverty in the 1980s.