Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

WE all as­pire to be grace­ful and coura­geous as we make our steps through this earth­ly jour­ney.

“Courage is the most im­por­tant of all the virtues, be­cause with­out courage you can’t prac­tise any oth­er virtue con­sis­tent­ly. You can prac­tise any virtue er­rat­i­cal­ly, but noth­ing con­sis­tent­ly with­out courage.”

~ Maya An­gelou, Po­et and Civ­il Rights Ac­tivist

Coura­geous women are not afraid to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo or make their voic­es heard. They un­der­stand that true change will on­ly hap­pen when coura­geous ac­tion is tak­en, so they don’t just ac­cept things as they are. As is Eliz­a­beth Joan Lewis Fran­cis, a mul­ti-di­men­sion­al woman, more com­mon­ly known for her pas­sion for sus­tain­able fash­ion, for cre­at­ing el­e­gant bridal and re­sort wear from nat­ur­al fi­bres and pro­mot­ing the need for en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty through her brand, Chris­tique Cloth­ing.

This year at EWA AFRICA, Chris­tique Cloth­ing launched their 2023 Col­lec­tion, “Oore Ati Oniye”, mean­ing ‘grace­ful and coura­geous’ in Yoru­ba. The Yoru­ba peo­ple are a West African eth­nic group who main­ly in­hab­it parts of Nige­ria, Benin, and To­go, con­sti­tut­ing more than 52 mil­lion peo­ple in Africa, and over a mil­lion out­side the con­ti­nent, bear­ing fur­ther rep­re­sen­ta­tion among mem­bers of the African di­as­po­ra.

Sus­tain­able fash­ion is key

“Be­ing a proud alum­nus of the Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion De­sign (CAFD), Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, where I earned a Bach­e­lor in Fine Arts De­gree, and a so­cial ad­vo­cate, I have a great pas­sion for the en­vi­ron­ment and wish to use my fash­ion brand to raise aware­ness of the dam­age that’s be­ing done and be a brand that is en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly re­spon­si­ble.

“Sus­tain­able Fash­ion is the way in which brands cre­ate cloth­ing and ac­ces­sories, not on­ly re­duc­ing the im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment, but al­so mind­ful of the eth­i­cal prac­tis­es in pro­duc­tion.

“One of my great­est ac­com­plish­ments is be­ing a qual­i­fied fash­ion de­sign­er, a dream I set out to achieve, along­side cre­at­ing fash­ion lines with a mean­ing­ful con­cept and be able to share a mes­sage or speak on an is­sue through my de­signs. This is im­por­tant to me. I chose sus­tain­able fash­ion be­cause I am in awe with the sci­ence be­hind fi­bres, tex­tiles and con­tin­ue to do re­search to be able to add in­no­va­tion to my brands port­fo­lio.”

Per­se­ver­ing de­spite set­backs

“My set­backs have all been a spring­board for me, to re­alise a greater pur­pose in life. I don’t quit de­spite the chal­lenges I have faced, be­cause now I can see it has pushed me to ac­com­plish greater things.

“The in­spi­ra­tion be­hind my 2023/24 is the strong war­rior women of African his­to­ry like Queen Can­dace and Har­ri­et Tub­man and the many pow­er­ful ex­am­ples of fear­less­ness, re­silience and pur­pose­ful­ness in the face of ad­ver­si­ty, the same qual­i­ties that are found in many mod­ern women and each of us as WE write our own sto­ries,” said the founder of Chris­tique Cloth­ing, Eliz­a­beth Fran­cis.

“I chose sym­bols from the Adinkra lan­guage of As­ante Tribe of Ghana that em­bod­ies the con­cept of Oore Ati Oniye, the sym­bols that em­bell­ish the gar­ments rep­re­sent lead­er­ship, faith in God and courage.

“I want to en­cour­age women not to give up, hold on to your dreams, my faith in God is my most prized pos­ses­sion, with Him your true pur­pose is ful­filled!”