The 2009 judging panel consisted of Ferial Haffajee, editor of City Press; Laurice Taitz, publishing and media consultant; Jenny Crwys-Williams, literary critic and 702 talk show host; Kassie Naidoo, creative director at King James RSVP JHB, and fashion commentator and trends analyst, Dion Chang (convener).
Andrew achieved the feat of winning the Fashion Editing category for a second successive year with her Paper Dolls feature published in Business Day: Wanted. Taitz described the winning feature as “technically dazzling, an extraordinary accomplishment of imagination, conceptualisation and implementation - and truly beautiful to look at,” an opinion on which the judges all concurred.
Bongela scooped the Fashion Writing category award for her article about Soweto's snappy youth culture in Street Smarties, which appeared in Elle SA. This is Elle SA's third successive win in the writing category. Haffajee says that it was Bongela's ability to capture the grassroots developments of fashion and the insight it brought into youth sub-culture that won it the majority vote.
According to Haffajee, who also judged the awards in 2008, the standard of the entries in the writing category this year showed a marked improvement, which suggested an overall pleasing positive trend. “The standard of the short-listed entries, in particular, made it extremely difficult to choose a winner,” she says.
According to Nandi Scorer, head: group marketing at Sanlam, the media plays a critical role in raising broad-based awareness of the local fashion and design industries that are so vital to the country's job-creating entrepreneurial sector. “But even more important than merely creating awareness is the media's power to influence and foster loyalty and respect for local design among South African consumers,” she says.
