Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Cape Town was just blown out of March.
The Fashion Week was held in a marquee tent at Camps Bay Sports Club, but Cape Town's wind left it literally "up in the air", with the first two days interrupted and the third and final day cancelled.
On Saturday morning, the final day, the event's host African Fashion International (AFI) announced that the events for the day were cancelled. This followed the interruptions to the two previous days events due to the strong winds which posed a safety threat with so many people packed in an unstable marquee. "We could not take the risk of having to evacuate you for the third time," said AFI chairperson Dr. Precious Moloi-Motsepe.
Moloi-Motsepe said that the executive team had decided to postpone the event to a later date following the advice from structural engineers as well as the health and safety reps who were in agreement that the marquee competing with the force of the winds was unsafe.
Moloi-Motsepe was deeply apologetic to all the designers and other stakeholders, both locally and abroad, who lost money through the unfortunate turn of events, and proposed a new date of April 6-7, 2017. This is still to be confirmed.
On Friday guests were ushered out of venue just after 6.20pm during the Sweetie, Kefseddy Designs and Black Trash Clothing show.
The only event which went according to plan was David Tlale's show which, as is the case every year given the clout behind his brand, was held at an offsite venue, the Cape Town City Club.
This happened after the events of the opening night, the previous day, when the venue was hurriedly evacuated during the second-last show due to strong wind.
Senegalese designer Adama Amanda Ndiaye, who was set to show off the work behind her brand Adama Parison Saturday evening says she was "very disappointed" with everything that went down, citing "the lack of organisation and communication and everything basically".
Ndiaye, who had paid for her own travel arrangements, said: "Us, we're not South African. I took a nine-hour flight to Johannesburg and a two-hour flight here. This is not a holiday for me, I'm a business woman and the collection I was going to show is inspired by young people in Congo who dress well with bright colours and mismatch designs. It was going to be really colourful and joyful, and I was really looking forward to bringing something different."
Ndiaye will show her work at Seoul Fashion Week as well as Brazil Fashion Week.
Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week comes just before South African Fashion Week, which is set to take place on Tuesday in Johannesburg.