International Beauty Queen of West Africa, Shireen Benjamin has vowed to dedicate it to increasing the support of African fashion. Working alongside the Miss West Africa event organizers, Shireen Benjamin has launched a campaign called “African Music for Fashion”; in the process she will also be launching ‘African Fashion Day’ which will take place on August 6 and subsequently on the first Saturday of every August.
Shireen Benjamin said she is highly impressed at the continuous growth of the African music industry, but highly appalled that despite this growth you can sit in front of your TV set watching African music for an hour and hardly see individuals wearing African attire, neither mentioning nor promoting the names of any African designers. Instead they use their voice and musical appeal to continue promoting the same designers that neglect our shops, models, magazines and even the musicians of Africa. “African fashion from all regions of Africa is beautiful and we can’t wait for the people and media abroad to appreciate it before we become more confident with wearing it,” she comments.
The ‘African Music for Fashion’ campaign is targeted at African musicians, record labels and music video directors due to the fact that our musicians are increasingly becoming icons within the African continent, even encouraging MTV to organize and MTV African Music Awards. And no matter how they feel they are representing themselves as individuals, being in the lime light of popular culture, there will always be a fraction of society that are influenced by their actions and words, Africans and non Africans alike.
Shireen also believes African artists that choose to wear African fashion will actually have a bigger impact on the international community than those that struggle to imitate the Western style. “People in the West, whether Africans abroad or other nations love West African music because it’s refreshing and a break to their norm, it can only help an artist if they embrace a full on African identity, otherwise their presence is no different to what we have all seen for ages, suits, half naked woman and cars is so 90s. Youssou N’Dour to date is one of the biggest West African artists singing at concerts worldwide and working with Wyclef Jean and he always stayed true to his fashion in videos and on stage.”
But Shireen Benjamin also states that her campaign and public speeches will not only be directed at encouraging music artists to do so, but the public in general. She says “The artists are a means to the goal, and the goal is the society, the reason why this campaign targets artists is because despite politicians and their power, musicians have always been the most influential icons of every African/black community. So the change will be a lot faster even without the artist when we ourselves embrace our culture.
According to the beauty queen, models, fashion show organizers and designers in Africa cannot complain about the lack of support and growth in African fashion when they hardly have one picture of them on any networking website wearing African attire. She adds “We are rich with creativity and we need to see these changes, we can’t be exploiting the dream by doing fashion weeks and shows, if even the organizers don’t wear it. We need to see these changes in our movies, in our music and even in our clubs. I think we should all work towards the day when you walk through the streets of Africa, even the popular cities, that we see a crowd flourishing with African attires.”
Shireen Benjamin’s “African Music for Fashion” will be posted on all the Miss West Africa websites. She intends to use her international popularity and give back to Africa. Shireen who is currently the first African titled beauty queen to be featured twice in OK magazine, put together a shoot right before leaving to Atlanta for the Beffta USA using African fabrics to inspire and encourage the belief that there is African attire for all occasions. The shoot had onboard international reknowned fashion photographer Phil Antony, designs from Scissorhands Couture, Jessique Designs and was styled by MiNC Models and make up by Mutsumi.
Shireen says she is looking forward to meeting her successor in Nigeria this December, where the next Miss West Africa (now Miss West Africa International) will take place.
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