“When you show in New York, it goes all over the world … I see New York as having a market for everything so it should be a great testing-ground,” she said.
McCreath, who studied design in Rome, founded KikoRomeo in 1996 after years in the fashion industry in Milan and Barcelona followed by aid work in Angola and Kenya.
“Nobody was designing ready-made African wear that was in line with contemporary fashion,” she said. “So I set out to do a contemporary African fashion brand, which would incorporate a lot of handcrafting and would work with community groups, artists and artisans.”
Her business was hit during an economic downturn in 2003 and again during Kenya’s 2008 post-election violence but now sales are strong and she is moving to a larger shop at the Yaya Centre in Nairobi.

KikoRomeo’s clothes are edgy explosions of colour. McCreath and her team, which has included Kenyan designer Norbert Ochieng, use African fabrics, often with hand-painted details, but then defy expectations with innovative cuts and styles. Visitors to the Nairobi shop include Kenyan regulars, people from the diaspora, south Sudanese, Europeans and Americans. She is also discovering new interest among Nairobi’s Chinese.

McCreath says AFWNY is a great opportunity for Africa’s diverse designers who need to be more present on the international scene.
“You want to go from being a one-time flash … to setting a tradition where every season you are showing and people can see you are evolving.”
Today, her main line is her ready-to-wear, but she also does couture, often using raw silk. She also uses a lot of hand-woven cottons, knitting and crocheting. She sources a lot of textiles from West Africa and would like to buy more from Kenya but there is a problem with the quality of both the fabric and the printing.

She builds her couture collections around meticulously researched themes. Previous collections included Afro-Punk, in which she explored body scarring and recycling. Last year, she explored the theme of shields, taking inspiration from the shape of traditional Maasai and Kikuyu shields in her cuts, patterns and designs. McCreath is keen to incorporate her Peace Patches initiative into the collection she takes to New York in July. She started Peace Patches during the post-election violence – she gives her scraps to women in Kibera, they decorate them and then she buys them back and adds them to a garment.

McCreath is passionate about cuts and what a dress should do (flatter the body shape whatever it is) but also about working with local people.
“(The Peace Patches project) is important to me, not just because it’s creating something very unique … but it’s the whole thing of stimulating people’s creativity,” she says.
“I feel it’s more than just a decorative patch put on a garment. It’s giving people an opportunity to keep up their self-worth and keep their traditions in arts and crafts alive.”
She wants to expand the project to camps for refugees and displaced people across the region, including in Somalia.

Africa Fashion Week will take place between July 11 and 17 and will feature runway shows, vendor exhibitions, and networking events.
“Having an established fashion week that promotes designers from the continent is very helpful and I just hope it brings in enough business to warrant a regular appearance at it,” says McCreath.

www.afwny.com
www.kikoromeo.com