Alumni

After graduating with a distinction from the Elizabeth Galloway Academy of Fashion Design in 2005, Elmé spent several years working and freelancing at various fashion studios and institutions in both London and South Africa before launching her line in 2010.

Elmé’s work explores the link between design and craft. She likes to push boundaries with her designs, manipulates and engineers textiles into highly sought after fashion forward garments.

In April of 2011, she showed her debut collection at South Africa Fashion Week and launched her first label, Ek_Bacharach soon after. Elmé retails her range through a number of local boutiques such as The Farmers Daughter and WOW! in Stellenbosch.

Elmé is part of the Carnet de Mode, a crowd-sourcing based fashion collective. This Collective gets its members exclusive access to collection previews, where designers can upload look-book’s and previews of their range samples 6 months before launching theline. Be sure to check her work out at:

www.notjustalabel.com/ek_bacharach and at www.carnetdemode.com/en/contest-whiteswan/ek_bacharack.html

Since graduating from Elizabeth Galloway in 2008, Tarien has been a part of the “Non-European” mentorship programme. This programme aims to develop fashion ranges for retail with a strong focus on the work of emerging designers from the Elizabeth Galloway Academy.

Under the mentorship of Elizabeth Malherbe and with the backing from the Academy, Tarien has been able to grow the label “Non-European”. Tarien has show-cased at all major fashion weeks in South Africa. This has helped to forge her position and standing as a local brand.

In this time, she has built her distribution network and now stocks a host of boutiques in the Western Cape. She has built a solid following of customers and has become a sought after designer by local fashion journalist and magazines.

Tarien’s style is restrained and dignified and this is evident in her attention to detail in the

construction and finish of her work. Tarien sets a high standard in her work and pushes herself to constantly achieve this.

In 2007 Chota Sulleman chose to leave her home in Lusaka, Zambia in order to complete a Diploma in Fashion Design at the Elizabeth Galloway Academy of Fashion Design. This was a brave move for this mother of two, but a small sacrifice to achieve her dreams.

In her third year of study, Chota was noted as one of the best students in her class. She was show-cased as an emerging creative in fashion at the prestigious Design Indaba Expo 2010 in Cape Town, South Africa. This platform helped to expose her work to the industry and led to creative partnerships.

To end 2010, Chota had her debut at Mozambique Fashion Week (MFW). At MFW Chota presented her Autumn/Winter 2011 collection as part of the Pan-African show case. This feature closed MFW 2010, with a selection of designers from countries as diverse as South Africa, Zambia, Senegal and Algeria. Chota’s collection explored the theme African Warrior Women. Strong embellishments echoed the patterns of bronze breast plates and the doors of Ethiopian Forts.

Her clothes are now available in Cinnamon and Silk stores in Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa.