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Designed to LAST
LONGEVITY, PASSION AND STAYING POWER ARE THE HALLMARKS OF THIS RENOWNED DURBAN DESIGNER’S CAREER, CELEBRATING 25 YEARS IN BUSINESS THIS YEAR ... BY SIMPLY STAYING IN HIS LANE AND STICKING TO WHAT HE DOES BEST, WRITES JOANNE HAYES
H
ard to believe, but Francois Vedemme, one of Durban’s foremost couturiers, is a trained lawyer, with a BProc from the University of the OFS. After doing his national service, he headed to the big smoke of Johannesburg, where he joined Liberty Life as a junior legal advisor. “The job didn’t make my heart sing,” says Francois, “so I decided to make a complete change and headed to London and then to Hawaii, to work in a bar for a friend who I knew from Jozi, who’d set up a business there. “It was in idyllic Hawaii that I started sketching fashion. I’d never drawn a thing before that; I had no previous training or even interest, but those sketches became my first portfolio.” After a year he decided to head home – he was 29 years old, with a law degree and not much of a portfolio to speak of. A friend then introduced him to Tony Aboud, head of fashion at the Durban Technicon, with a view to getting a place in the class. He’d never touched a sewing machine or
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pictures aik christodoulou photography and jono nienaber/ pure photographic studio
Mutual trust is paramount with my clients. I need to be able to use my creativity freely, with not too much prescription”
threaded a needle, and his portfolio was not a great advert for his ability, so he didn’t expect much. He got into the course and the rest is history. Francois started his studies at Durban Technicon in March 1991, selling his car to fund his education. After graduating in 1993, he set himself up in a bachelor flat, living in one half of the room and sewing in his kitchen. In 1995, he was joined by his first seamstress who traded places to sew in the kitchen, while he cut out patterns on his bed. It wasn’t long before he expanded his “empire” to a two-
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