Mobile app launched to connect to African fashion designers

Lesela, meaning cloth or fabric in Sesotho and Swahili, is a new mobile app that provides access to African fashion designers, both emerging and established.

Inspired by the love of our continent’s unique fashion, design, culture, art and music, Lesela is home to the latest fashion trends from across South Africa and the continent, offering a diverse range of fashion items from the design houses of the local talent that makes Africa tick.

With Lesela, anyone, anywhere can connect to and buy from fashion brands and designers across South Africa.

Not only does Lesela allow consumers to build profiles, browse, save and shop, it allows designers to easily connect to markets they would otherwise not have been able to tap into - all on one app.

First imagined and then created by local entrepreneurial couple, Andile Tshuma and Mamello Khantsi, Lesela is now live and available for download on Android from the Play Store, with IOS coming soon.

“We believe in the potential of our African fashion industry. We believe that fashion is an expression of who we are as a people and in giving fashion designers the platform to express themselves, their work and their representative backgrounds with little interruption by existing, large, often multinational, organisations that tend to overshadow them,” said Khantsi.

“Our vision is to become the market of choice for all small- to medium-sized fashion entrepreneurs in Africa with an African story to tell – at the same time opening up channels for consumers to order, purchase and pay for uniquely African fashion online through secure payment methods,” explained Tshuma.