Last week, RefuSHE announced the judges’ winner of its Fashion Challenge 2022: Destination Nairobi, and now the time has come to learn who won the fan favorite pick.
After RefuSHE’s live stream of this year’s annual Fashion Challenge, the organization allowed fans to vote for their favorite designer over the weekend (you can see every look here), and today, the votes are finally in.
[Drumroll please…] Peggy Onyango of the eponymous label Peggy “O” is taking home the fan favorite award for her talented use of RefuSHE’s Nadia Blooming Vines fabric to tell her mentor, Iman Mohammed Abdalla’s story. The final look included a long, flowy jacket to the fit of the bustier. Onyango’s construction of this “two-in-one” was impeccable and styled perfectly with a Kendra Scott necklace.
As a member of RefuSHE’s Artisan Collective, Mohammed Abdalla’s story was inspiring to Onyango the moment the two were paired. When Mohammed Abdalla was 10 years old, she was forced to flee political persecution in Ethiopia. After arriving in Kenya, Mohammed Abdalla’s mother went missing. After all these years, she longs to find her mother while also building a life for herself in Kenya. As a part of RefuSHE, Mohammed Abdalla began pursuing her passion and dreams of becoming a successful fashion designer and tailoring instructor.
“I loved her story. I was so inspired and immediately when I read that story I knew I was meant to make something that was a two-in-one,” Peggy said in a statement of her collaboration with Mohammed Abdalla. “I wanted to create attention with this style.”
The Project Runway-style live stream, hosted by model Halima Aden, was judged by a panel including Kenyan media personality Adelle Onyango, Vice President of Design at Kendra Scott, Denise Chumlea, IAMISIGO’s Creative Director Bubu Ogisi, Vice President of Strategic Community Engagement & External Affairs at Best Buy, Amelia Hardy, Co-Founder, and CEO of Isthmus App, Carley Lake, CIO Africa Editor-in-Chief, Carol Odero, and Founder and Chief Creative Designer of KAHINDO, Kahindo Mateene. On Friday, the judges selected designer Monica Kanari as this year’s panelist winner.
When asked how she felt following her win, Kanari responded to GRAZIA USA saying, “It’s really exciting, and the victory is for both [mentee] Elizabeth Yar and myself; it shows that her inspiration, her story, is worth telling.” Kanari says.
“Elizabeth Yar’s story personally challenged me,” the designer continues. “Often, we feel limited, like we don’t have everything we need to achieve our goals, then you meet Elizabeth Yar, whose positivity challenges you. She gave us energy as a team to create something that showed her beauty, an outfit that brings out her personality and character to show your limitations can be your success story.”
The winning title isn’t the only thing Kanari is bringing home, “I have to come to love the RefuSHE tie-dye prints and will definitely do a collection with them, which is one of our immediate next steps.”
