Finchitua combines digital art and Fashion. 

by | Jun 20, 2022 | Art, Between Art & Technology, CSA Celebrates, Culture, Design, Entertainment, Fashion, Lifestyle, Talent, Tech, The Wire, Trends

  • A new kind of fashion show
  • Fashion and digital art
  • Real clothes not costumes or gimmicks
  • Images with a statement
  • The future of digital fashion

Dubai-based, Ethiopian designer, Feiruza Mudessir, has seen the future of African Fashion. Her street wear label, Finchitua(which means “the girl with a gap between her teeth” in Amharic), combines idiosyncratic fashion quirks, globalization, heritage, and the audacity of avant-garde street individualism. Indeed, the latest collection disrupts the notion of a fashion show, rather creating digital art that showcases her narrative as an adventure into multiple African futures. It’s innovative, unexpected, and so African.

Fashion and Digital Art.

The capsule collection teams Mudessir with Fanuel Leul, a digital artist based in Addis Ababa. Fanuel’s visons of “African future tense” instinctively weaves cultural themes, history and traditions with sci-fi elements that integrate technology in a very believable way. His world resonates with the familiar and jars with possibility. It is this future fantasy that energises Mudessir’s own diasporic experience into a plausible narrative told through the language of clothes. A global citizen, she was born in Ethiopia, lived in India and currently produces in Dubai. Yet her designs are more than just geographically informed, rather they are saturated with culture.

Not Costumes or Gimmicks.

Mudessir’s research and investigation into Afro-Futurism led her serendipitously to Fanuel’s Art. “I didn’t even know that he was Ethiopian at first, which made it very special for me,” she said, indicating there is an instinctive connection to how the two creatives work. Mudessir’s designs are not costumes or gimmicks, but rather intrinsically belong within the spaces Fanuel invites us into. This intimacy allows both Mudessir and Fanuel to explore an alternate reality together. And it is one of dignity, hope and where culture and technology have been realised within a rich, successful utopia.

Images with a statement.

The clothing is of course beautiful and detailed with bold colours featuring exceptional textile design and construction. The images are statements and no doubt have anthropological vibes. They don’t lose their street ethos though, remaining tangible in the sense that the pieces are instantly wearable. They are rebellious and punk, but also matured and thoughtful.

The future of digital fashion.

Mudessir and Leul have quietly realised a post pandemic solution to the in-person staged Fashion show. Taking the expression of fashion and interpreting it through Digital art – with the possibility of minting the images as NFT’s – flips the whole notion of “what is Art” to “I am wearing art”. That this conversation is being born out of the collaboration of African creatives is fitting.

C.S.A.’s monthly cultural portal, The WIRE connects the dots of culture. With concise stories, many with video content, take a premium dive into the world of African entertainment & cultural fluidity. It’s one thing to be hip to what’s happening but it is another to know why.

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