She can create a power jacket out of old rusty spoons and a bra out of wooden spoons. Her vivid imagination can tranform minds and break fashion codes. Yet she remains subtle, humble and accomodative. Creating fashion art pieces (fit for a gallery) and jaw dropping sex aparell to her clientel
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Tarisai Efe Gweje
Born 7 December 1985, Tarisai Efa Gweje fell in love with fashion while at school studying it amongst one of her subjects. Immediately she new that fashion is all she wanted to become.
In 2002, she enrolled for a Fashion and Art Design course at the House of Designing College in Harare. It was under the tutelage of her mentor Crede Katsande thats she prevailed and blossomed. In 2005 she did pattern making at the Harare Poly Technic before a series of fashion shows where to become her entry into the fashion world, creating a path for an eventful brighter future with the stars.
A couple of more fashion gigs and invitations where to follow until what she calls the acme of her fashion career to date.
She was invited to showcase at the 2015 Africa Fashion Show in Nigeria. This to her has not only been enlightening but has brought her instant home stardom, an understanding of African fashion and possibly a much more lucrative career for her Avant-garde designs and creations.
At home she has showcased and created the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA) in 2007 along with friends and has seen her work being used at the Miss Zimbabwe, Miss Tourism and Miss Carnival pageants.
Meeting her for the first time before her work caught the eye of AFS organisers, I was quickly assured of a great woman in the making, when she talks of her work, like a true and gifted artist, her eyes light up while her smile widens and a certain dexterity engulfs her work. Nothing can be more satisfying to her than designing.
Inspired by #Chanel, she thrives to reach the same level of expertise within the fashion world. She believes the designer’s whimsical works are something out of this world and if she could only sop in his tenacity and hard work, she can surpass him.
She has soon become the go to designer for local female music artists within the country mainly her for ability to design superfluous evening gowns.
Her Gregarian nature has seen her well sort after by fashion seekers including religious women in the country who love to look good at Church.
However, her rise to her fashion reign has not been easy, it has been met with a certain ambivalence. There is a lack of excitement in nurturing young and upcoming fashion designers, a situation that could be exacerbated by the harsh economics in Zimbabwe. Tarisai has had to swallow bitter pill from would be investors torn between whether to treat her designs as art and not a proper business.
“If investors can regard fashion as a business initiative, a lot can change within the industry”
Deriving her inspiration from all around her, absorbing different energies and using garbage in some of her designs she can whip out a design from any material at her disposal. Her dream is to become the best designer of her time and owning the biggest and brightest brand internationally,
“I believe I am heading for greater place with my fashion”
In 2010, she stopped having her own fashion shows to concentrate on growing her brand and finding herself within a vast ocean of designs and fashion. Her Hort couture has set her apart from many of her peers and would like to see herself engaged in a lot more work within the region.
Follow her on her Facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/ChaivoDesigns
and blog at http://www.chaivodesigns.wordpress.com