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The hope of Fiji’s budding fashion industry sits on the thin shoulders of Lasiasa Raibevu Davetawalu, a 25-year-old from the village of Muaninuku.
The young designer did not have the opportunity to do what many in the country of the Pacific Ocean thought.
Realizing his commitment to the support of the entire Fijian fashion community, he raised funds to pay for fashion school and completed training at a fashion design studio in Tafe, NSW, Australia., It made him one of the few Fijian designers to receive professional training.
The strength of his latest graduate collection, a sensuous take on summer womenswear inspired by Fijian design traditions, landed him in the pages of Australian Vogue and landed him a job as a junior garment technician at Zimmerman, one of Australia’s most successful fashion labels.
“I am proud of my heritage and want to represent Fiji on the world fashion stage,” he said.
Alongside his work with Zimmerman, Davetawalu has his own label Elradi – a play on his initials, LRD.
Cheers, well-wishers and supporters greeted his graduate collection, which he brought from Sydney to Suva for the closing show of Fiji Fashion Week in May.
“Lai has shown promise since he put out his first collection as a student designer,” says Hosanna Kabakoro, his fellow designer at the resort. Wear Fijian “something different” with Duatani brand.
“Promise is something we see a lot here, but that rarely gets a chance to grow beyond that potential.”
He grew up showcasing diaphanous chiffon, intricate corsets and hand-embroidered dresses that would look right at home on a yacht from Ibiza to Barbados.
“He may be the first Fijian designer to really appeal to the general overseas market,” Kabakoro said.
Davetawalu’s Designs made subtle nods to Fijian cultural influences. A plunging, mock-neck dress, shot for Vogue Australia’s annual portfolio look at new fashion graduates, featured intricate hand knotting that took four months to complete. It was the opposite of fast fashion.
To the Fijians, the knots and frills on the skirts were disguised. magimagiHand-woven rope is made from coconut fiber and is used for fishing nets, canoes and traditional architecture.
Another, floaty piece of silk chiffon, seems to be a nod to the traditional Indian dress most seen in Fiji, due to the large Indo-Fijian population.
Before long Davetaulu was drawing designs and reading fashion magazines while other boys were playing rugby. At Queen Victoria School, a rural all-boys boarding school known as the cradle of indigenous masculinity that produced many Aitaki (indigenous Fijian) leaders.
“I get bullied a lot for being gay,” Devetawalu said. “They’d say, ‘Why are you always making clothes? Why don’t you do something manly?’ I ran away one morning and never came back.”
Davetaulu took a two-hour bus ride from rural Lawaki to downtown Suva in search of the office of Fiji Fashion Week, which had launched a student design competition.
He entered the competition but did not win. With the support of his relatives, Davetaulu found a school to attend and later presented his first collection.
A number of fashion industry professionals took notice of Davetawalu’s talent and took him under their wing, including Christine Evans, an Australian fashion designer living in Suva at the time, and Ellen Whippy-Knit, founder of Fiji Fashion Week, the indomitable Fiji Fashion Week.
Veteran Australian fashion guru Nicholas Huxley, who first met Davetawalu while running a mentoring program in Suva, calls him “the real deal”.
“He’s very unique and has a natural ability to look beyond the idea of putting clothes on a body,” he said.
Whippy-Knight aims to put fashion at the forefront of cultural discourse in Fiji. She pushed for local fashion education and other initiatives to benefit the industry, such as the establishment of a fashion council, incubators for emerging designers and greater government support.
Since 2007, she has organized annual runway shows as a platform for emerging designers like Davetawalu to showcase their craft and find buyers. As a result, a number of local designers – such as Samson Lee, Moira Solvalu and Michael Mausio, all of whom specialize in bold prints – have emerged as successful, albeit small, businesses at Fiji Fashion Week without any formal design training. .
The country’s fashion scene has also emerged as a safe space for LGBTQI+ people to find community and express themselves without fear of reprisal.
Colorful indigenous prints are what make Fijian fashion unique. For Fijian and Pacific Island wearers, they symbolize culture, identity and belonging, but local designers have had little success adapting these prints for Fiji’s tourism market, which receives around a million tourists each year.
The publications have global potential; Previously exploited by foreigners. A decade ago, sportswear giant Nike teased a line of printed women’s leggings inspired by Fijian, Samoan and Maori tattoo designs. And in the year Nanette Lepore, a New York womenswear brand that just launched in 2013, came under fire culturally after using a Fijian Maci design (and mislabeling it ‘Aztec’). Both companies adopted these products because of the outcry from Pacific communities.
For Davetaulu, the journey from a student designer to a budding professional who dreams of one day owning his own label has not been easy.
There was the issue of paying for design school in Australia as an international student, which cost $70,000. Fijian fashion community by: Whippy-Knit offers her a place to stay at her home in Sydney The Fijian Fashion Foundation hosts annual fundraisers to pay for the school, raising about $15,000 a year over four years.
Today he is one of the few Fijians with formal fashion design training. This is due to the FJ$100m (US$50m) domestic apparel manufacturing industry, which produces everything from sportswear to uniforms for Australia and New Zealand.
Several Fiji-based factories also produce fashion apparel for brands such as Kukai, a Fijian-Australian-owned trend-focused women’s brand; Founded by two Australian sisters who grew up partly in Fiji, Bimby and Roy, a symbol of female friendship; and Scanlan & Theodore, a high-quality womenswear brand with more than a dozen boutiques in Australia.
Despite local fashion manufacturing capabilities, there is a deep connection between the apparel industry and Fiji’s start-up fashion design industry. The latter face several constraints, including lack of access to formal education and training, hatchery and mentoring skills, quality fabrics and finance, as well as substantial government support for the industry.
“Our people are creative by nature,” says Whippy-Knit. “We have a tradition of making things with our hands. A proper fashion school for Fijian and Pacific designers is what we need.
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