Fashion Roman: Interview with Local Fashion Blogger

"You’re Not There To Make Friends"

Local girl from Bloemfontein unfolds her story on how she made it in the so called
“cruel industry”.

Zenobe Federicks (age 22) is currently studying media studies and journalism at the University Of The Freestate whereby she will be receiving her degree at the end of this year 2015. She has been blogging for the past 4 years now for her own personal blog named Stylebyzen.

Getting her inspiration from day by day clothing whereby it started just as an daily entry for her and incorporated her day looks and current mood that she was in that particular day into her blog posts, not knowing that it would be so accomplished as it is today for she has been approached by the South African GUESS brand for a spot as a GUESS WATCHES access blogger in her second year of blogging. Her job is to style the guess fashion items that are sent to her with her own clothing and then blog about it.

Another highlight in her career is that she has also been approached by Martian Watches which is an international watch accessory brand, in October 2014 as a blogger position for the brand. She has also appeared on the hit TV-Show, Hectic-Nine 9 on SABC 2 and she had the privilege to style two presenters on that show twice already as she is also a freelance stylist.

Her favourite colour is pink but she describes her personal style to be risk taking, does that sound as sweet as the colour “pink”? Fair enough she likes grabbing attention when it comes to fashion, having a unique attraction to weird looking fashion items, she described. With the urge stand out from the crowd and showing people how the particular so called “weird” item is suppose to be worn and carried. Her favourite fashion item are boots and she joked around about how if she could wear boots all season long, right through the year than she supposenly would do that if it was not for the heat in the summer seasons.

The goal in this industry is to one day be an editor for Elle magazine. She rapidly enjoys writing about fashion related news as she was also a SA contributor for Zen magazine which is a Nigerian based fashion magazine where she contributed South African fashion news and she was doing that for 3 years.

Getting deeper into the fashion industry she is against animal cruelty. “There should be a law made against it. It should be taken seriously” she explained. It is cruel what we are doing to these poor animals just for textiles and we can imitate it and it would look exactly the same as the real thing. Globalization is happening globally every day and she pleads openly that she is not against globalization and added that without that process we would not have moved forward and advanced as we did thus fast, but everything that are hindering the whole process can be controlled. She urges the fashion industry to start going green, producing more eco-friendly and this way we would live in a more eco-friendly environment.

Is the South African fashion industry trying to imitate the international fashion industry? 30% Yes and 70% No. Covered with the South African designer Gavin Rajah story where he copied a design yet again when a very similar design came down on the SA Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2015 runway, that is when she was persuade that the South African fashion industry is trying to imitate what is happening internationally. She finds it inspiring when our local designers embrace our African roots and culture into their designs and motivates designers to continue to do so because that way we will get more noticed internationally. Stop trying to blend in with the rest of the world, stick to our roots and dare to be different, let them know that it is made proudly by the essence of South Africa.

Some advice for our local fashion bloggers are consistent blog posts, humble yourself and ling off your pride because you do need people in this industry. Out of experience she said that her biggest lesson is that not everyone is going to try and help you reach your goals, they are going to try and fish information out of you. There are backstabbers, just swallow up the little heart break and move on. Don’t ever give up and don’t get your feelings twisted. The fashion industry is a cruel, creative playground. So play along but remember that everyone are for themselves.

In this case there is an “i” in the word Fashion.