The very last of last days

On the very last day of Design Indaba Cape Town gave to me;

• · One trendy lady (click)
• · A fashion conscious ninja (click)
• · A wool crazed Dutchman (click)
• · The ex-con glitterati (click) Quintus's opinion
  
• · One epileptic
• · A social housing guru (click)
• · 6 future farmers

And some sushi that I ate for free.

What an eventful last day indeed! The day was kicked off with Li Edelkoort, one of the speakers I looked forward to the most, she is a super duper consumer trend forecaster. The question is, what came first, Li or the trend?! :)

Her trends in a nut-shell, were family based, family is coming together, not the idea of a nuclear family, all manner of family, nuclear, same sex, adopted, fostered, groups, extended families etc. This in turn influences the indiwidual (as she says it) and the indiwidual is no longer more important than the group. People are looking for connections, life has to mean more than work, and relationships are very important (great ... even Li is making fun of me for being single) in our social matrix at the moment, which of course means consumers are feeling this impact. And of course, yellow is the new pink!

Han Feng was up next, a super duper dynamic little Chinese lady, she is truly inspirational in that she is the epitome of “fake it till you make it”, launching her career in fashion by paying fellow Chinese immigrants to the states $1 per scarf that they made, then selling them off to departments stores, you got to love it, or at the very least admire it.

Christien Meindertsma was next in the line up, she is wool be-f**k – literally! She started off with the philosophy of one sheep = one cardigan, which is lovely, if not just a wee bit un-feasible. Ending her talk with her book PIG05049 which is a book that details what happens to EVERY (she is very thorough) SINGLE bit and piece of the pig. Let’s just say, as it turns out, I am an unbelievably dodgy vegetarian, and if the other vegetarians knew I would be asked to leave the vegetarian inner circles of trust.

Martha Martha Martha, where do I start?! I was so looking forward to Martha, you see fundamentally, I am a huge fan. In my itty bitty feminist world, any woman who can be worth billions, run a successful business and do it all in heels deserves respect – R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

This is why, I spent all week eyeing every blond of appropriate age in the venue. I was over exited and I suspect in hind sight, expecting too much, hence when the patron saint of house wives started off on a downward slope and well, just kept sliding, I was horrified, mortified even. She spent the best part of an hour, explaining the Martha Empire, which is considerable, and then moved onto her “most exiting” newest addition, glitter, I am not even joking, Martha came to the Design Indaba, not only to discuss glitter, but to show us how one can buy Martha glitter by number packs, or even download off Martha.com software that will allow you to glitter by number your favourite pics. She redeemed herself slightly by selling (literally) her paint range to us, it’s based off of a chicken, I kid you not, a chicken and the colourful eggs it lays.

Just as I am about to wash my hands of Martha completely, I remind myself ...

Martha has;

• · 2 000 000 twitter followers (which by the way, according to Martha is both cheap and free)
• · 300 000 people clicked her web site to view photos of her closet (the irony has not escaped me)
• · Martha brand enamel paint which costs $85 per gallon
• · A net worth of about $638 million in 2007
• · Probably got a prison tattoo and was jail bait :)

Gail has? ... Exactly!

You may not like the old duck, but you got to respect her achievements!

Alejandro Aravena is a social housing guru from Chilli. Social Housing is one of my passions, I took it as an elective during my honours year – and loved it! It is a very complex issue as it deals with more than just housing, it about pride, community, ownership, achievement and values, just to skim to top of the iceberg. His ideas, while innovative, were not unique, but he managed to present them so beautifully and passionately that he had the audience hanging off his every word. He got the only (that I saw) standing ovation of the conference. Well deserved!

We had to miss the ZA puppets unfortunately, as we were running late, and Mornay put the fear of God into us with traffic horror stories. Afeared of missing our plane we hit the highway, crawled to the airport, booked in and had sushi to say good bye to Cape Town.

BYE CAPE TOWN!!

xxxgail