Twenty Years of Mozambique Fashion Week: The Cherry Before the Cake

The lights dim, followed by the hush of silence sweeping the room.

Each edition of Mozambique Fashion Week opens with a poem. Written by Mozambican poet and artist Sonia Sultuane, it calls attention to breast cancer, our bodies and the vulnerabilities contained within them. “In an event of lights, glamour and applause,” she says, “we begin with silence. With vulnerability. With truth.” It is a disruptive gesture; an act of courage to remind us that we are human before we are an aesthetic.

It is an unusual way to begin a fashion week. But then, Mozambique Fashion Week is not really a fashion week—not in the conventional sense. “Fashion Week is normally the cherry on top of the cake, what we have is only the cherry. We still need to bake the cake,” says Vasco Rocha, MFW’s director. For twenty years, MFW has operated in this inversion: a fashion platform without a fashion industry, a cultural institution building the infrastructure it was supposed to rest upon.

To understand why, you have to understand what was lost.

Mozambique’s relationship with fashion has long been shaped by limitations. During Portuguese colonial rule, the country produced cotton and textiles primarily for European consumption. By 1970, Mozambique was the eighth most industrialised country in Africa—with an active textile sector—but the products did not reflect local identity. This was deliberate; the European way of dressing was framed as civilised, while indigenous expression was restricted through what can only be described as a “suffocating conservationism.”

Expressing ‘Mozambicanity’ was deemed inappropriate. Something as innocuous as colored beads in a child’s hair was frowned upon. Donning the capulana—the most recognizable symbol of Mozambican culture today—was the greatest transgression, viewed as a passive form of resistance.

Yet the capulana endured. Introduced to Mozambique in the 19th century through trade between Portuguese, Dutch and Indian merchants, it has evolved into the most unifying element across the country. It is a versatile cloth, infused with meaning: everyday clothing for the working woman, a sling for carrying children, a mat to sit on, a wedding garment, a burial shroud. Where there is capulana, there is Mozambique.

Independence in 1975 brought a brief but explosive surge of expressive freedom, particularly in what people wore. Veteran designer Adélia Tique recalls a time of vibrant clothing, and boubous—head cloths worn in Malawi and Tanzania—brought back by the wives of previously exiled guerilla fighters. “It was thrilling,” she claims, “a statement of Africaness.”

This exuberance did not last long. The ensuing civil war, spanning nearly three decades, destroyed Mozambique’s industrial capacity. Textile manufacturing was one of the worst hit sectors. Clothing became scarce and fabric was heavily rationed. Of what was available, most came in bulk from East Germany: war-era garments in monochrome colours, made of material unsuited to the local climate.

A Mozambican designer recounts a story that perfectly illustrates the absurdity of that period: “What we got were dresses from the GDR (East Germany), which were all the same. Once there was even confusion in the building where we lived because my mother’s dress fell on the neighbors porch, who when going out, was questioned by my mom as to why she was wearing her dress. But no, the dresses were all the same! It was a very sad phase, from 1978 to 1986. Then, fashion really died.”

The late 1980s brought liberalisation—and a different kind of collapse. Under the weight of the World Bank’s Economic Recovery Program, the domestic textile industry floundered further, unable to keep up with the influx of cheaper fabrics from Asia. At the same time, large volumes of used clothing entered the country under the guise of humanitarian aid—”donated” garments exempt from customs duty.

These clothes are still known locally as xicalamidade: “calamity cloth.” The name proved accurate. By 1992, producing capulana locally cost nearly four times as much as importing it. Factories closed. Skills were lost. In the decades since, second-hand clothing markets have become an important source of livelihood, employing an estimated 200,000 people today.

It was from this vacuum that Mozambique Fashion Week emerged.

The first edition, held in the province of Inhambane, was not conceived as a fashion-first event. It was a celebration of Mozambique’s creative spirit and cultural capital on a national scale. “What made us focus on fashion was the outcome of the event. The place was packed. People came from all corners of Mozambique to witness the shows,” Rocha says.

This was a moment of clarity—there was an appetite for cultural expression that was not being satisfied. Fashion became the medium through which it was expressed, not because it was glamorous but because it could hold multiple forms within a single platform: music, poetry, performance, visual art. “From the very beginning, Mozambique Fashion Week understood that we were not simply showing clothing,” Sultuane says. “We are showing a way of feeling the country.”

Early editions were marked by radical creativity. With limited resources, MFW leaned into imagination. Shows were staged in the historic Maputo train station, with models walking on trains moving along the platform. One took place on an airport runway, featuring a LAM plane, the state-owned airline; passengers arriving from Portugal were treated to an unexpected fashion show. These were not stunts, but statements. A guiding principle of MFW is to portray a positive Mozambique—one defined by creativity, ambition, resilience, and with something to offer the world.

Over twenty years, Mozambique Fashion Week has established itself as a national institution. Fashion became a tool of development. Social advocacy on breast cancer awareness, child marriage, domestic violence, LGBTQIA+ rights, and racism were embedded into the platform. Poetry, music, dance and art became the structural elements through which ‘Mozambicanity’ was expressed.

MFW also positioned Mozambique within the African fashion ecosystem early on, inviting designers from across the continent to display their collections and engage in dialogue. Workshops in South Africa, skill transfer programs with CNA-Federmoda in Italy, and partnerships in Portugal enabled Mozambican designers to access technical training and new markets.

“Africa has a vast young population looking to express their unique identity, their Africanness,” Rocha says. Tapping into this requires equipping a new generation of designers with the skills and vocabulary to capture these realities. The 20th edition launched the Mozambique Fashion Forum in collaboration with the National Cotton Institute, aiming to reconnect fragments of the value chain from cotton production to textile processing to design. “We need to think of cotton as more than a commodity,” Rocha says. “It is a nation-building tool.”

Fashion in Mozambique has come a long way, but still exists within structural limitations. There is no manufacturing capacity. Second-hand clothing dominates the market. “That’s not something that designers can or should compete with,” Rocha says. “These markets exist because people need to live.”

Claudio Lobo, founder of the streetwear brand Chibaia, echoes this sentiment: “What we do is art and culture. What is sold in the xicalamidade is survival.” With the visibility that MFW awarded him, Lobo now runs a physical store in Maputo serving a small but growing clientele—affluent locals, tourists, and internet-savvy youth. The brand’s name is itself an act of reclamation: Chibaia is Lobo’s ancestral family name, forsaken during colonial rule so his grandfather could secure work as a teacher. Reviving it is an act of Africanness.

Capulana plays an integral role in his designs. “Putting capulana and streetwear together automatically results in an African freedom of expression,” Lobo says. Though capulana is produced outside of Mozambique, the design language allows it to remain distinctly local.

For younger designers, MFW has served as a legitimising force. Sania Bacar, founder of the brand Savá, represents a generation of Mozambicans navigating global and local realities simultaneously. For her, authenticity is non-negotiable. “I avoid adding ‘African’ details just because they are expected,” she says. “That feels like performance, not identity. Savá is African because I am African, not because I try to prove it.”

Her audience follows online global trends while seeking representation rooted in their physical environment. Homegrown fashion meets needs that imported clothing cannot: local identity, cultural confidence, a sense of belonging. Constraints around materials and production do not deter her. “The limitations don’t stop me—they refined my eye,” Bacar concludes.

Progress is slow, but visible. In the absence of formal fashion schools, training remains a central tenet of the platform—from early identification of talent to programs that pair skills with equipment. Several young designers who once showed at MFW now operate stores serving local and international markets. New actors have filled the gaps in production and craft, often through knowledge obtained from or transferred through the platform. The fashion value chain is much stronger than it was twenty years ago.

Despite its longevity, Mozambique Fashion Week remains largely absent from English-language media. Rocha is unbothered. “We are not looking for authority, we are focused on re-building the value chain to last,” he says. “The media will come when there are results.”

The results are not a revived textile industry or a generation of globally recognized names. They are quieter: a platform that has outlasted its constraints, designers who no longer need to perform their identity, and a country that gathers each year to watch its own creative expression—beginning, always, with silence, vulnerability, and truth.

The cherry came first. The cake is still baking.