Road to AFI-Capetown Fashion Week - Hell's Gate Gorge Shoot

We have been invited to show at this year’s AFI Fashion Week in capetown. To get a sense of the Adele Dejak brand, AFI commissioned a visual campaign. The intention of the campaign was to contextualize the brand and explore the link between design, culture and place.

When considering possible locations for the shoot, Adele wanted intensity and immensity, which is why she went with the Hell’s gate gorge and Lake Naivasha. We also filmed at Globe roundabout in Nairobi’s CBD as we wanted to capture the energy and pace of Nairobi and at the Adele Dejak studio and showroom in Kiambu. We want to look back on these settings separately as they each had a different sense, mood and concept. But as varied as they were, you discover an underlying narrative and this is the narrative of Africa.

Hell’s Gate Gorge – Naivasha

The Hell’s Gate gorge inspires equal amounts of awe and terror. To truly experience it, you must descend to the center, deep in the belly of the earth, climbing down its precarious and intimidating walls. It was a difficult, dare-devil descent for some of our crew members. But that’s what made the fashion week exciting. Almost everyone was clambering down on all fours and certainly everyone was pleading and negotiating to live.

But the sublimity of the gorge immediately replaces the disquietude. It’s surreal being so deep into the earth and surrounded by imposing walls the color of rust. Everything becomes –literally and sensually – heightened. The small streams, the interspersing greenery, the boulders – they all make for a postcard-esque scenery. But scenes and subtleties change as casually as an automated screensaver. This profundity and moodiness is what we wanted to accompany the pieces for the campaign.

We created a whole new collection for the shoot and for fashion week. We titled it Dhamani which is the Swahili word for precious. This collection is celebratory – it’s about valuing what matters and that’s life, love and culture. The pieces in this collection match the gorge for drama and scale – the combination made for a truly exhilarating shoot.

It was a gorgeous day – wordplay intended – and we cannot get over how precious the film was. We will be sharing scenes from the lake next in our next fashion week. Subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates on new stories.

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