Celebrating 21 years of the "Business of Fashion", South African Fashion Week (SAFW) 2018 rolls out the red carpet in Sandton City and Nelson Mandela Square from October 23-27 with 59 local womenswear and menswear designers presenting their Autumn/Winter 2019 collections.

SAFW is more than just a fabulous and fun social event for the public—the week is also an important business-to-business platform for designers, buyers, fashion editors and industry insiders from across Africa to make connections, spotlighting and supporting innovation and diversity. 

This season's programme features a Student Competition and a New Talent Search to highlight young, up-and-coming designers; previous new talent competitions catapulted local labels like Black Coffee to success. The New Talent Search opens SAFW on Tue Oct 23 at 18:30 featuring solo shows by Artclub and Friends, Ode, Cindy Mfabe, No Shade, Fikile Sokhulu, Outerwear, Birth, and Afrogrunge.

The only off-site show during SAFW is an immersive invitation-only exhibition at 44 Stanley on Wed Oct 24 at 16:00, where local womenswear designers Black Coffee, Guillotine Design By Lisa Jaffe, Lunar, Five8ths, and Hse Of Bespoke By Waseefa Hutton will debut their seasonal collections.

Another unique highlight of SAFW 2018 is the BRICS Designer Collections shows, representing exciting local and international designs by creatives from the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). 

SAFW 2018 also features solo shows throughout the week by South Africa's top creative fashion superstars Gert-Johan Coetzee, Rubicon and Amanda Laird Cherry, as well as dynamic collaborations with corporate brands.