How David Ochieng, A Kenyan Fashion Designer, Uses Fashion To Make A Positive Impact On Kenyan Communities

David Ochieng is making waves as an emerging fashion designer. Putting his country on the fashion map, Ochieng remains in the orbit of community, deploying fashion as a vehicle for social change.

Born in Nairobi’s sprawling urban slums, David Ochieng, aka Avido, is a rising fashion designer whose work fuses African prints with modern, breezy tailoring. His label, Lookslike Avido, is commercial enough, with even an option to have clothes customized on the website. More than that, the label has a painstaking dedication to Kibera, the community Ochieng comes from.

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A post shared by David Avido (@lookslikeavido)

His foray into fashion wasn’t easy. The firstborn in the family of four, Ochieng’s childhood was marred with difficulties. His mother was the sole breadwinner. She would do laundry for other people, and took odd jobs just to support him and his siblings. Lack of school fees worsened his situation. Eventually, he dropped out of school in form one.

Later, he would move from one construction site to the other looking for odd jobs to support his mother and his siblings. He found solace in new the friends he made. But, unfortunately, most of those friends had tragic ends: some started abusing drugs, others were killed, and a good amount started engaging in crime.

He Later joined a dance crew and they would dress up in hip clothing and donned dreadlocks. Little did they know that their new found hobby wouldn’t last for long. The dancing crew was mistaken for thugs leading to some being killed. As a result, his mother urged him to take a different path. One day, she gave him two of the five dollars she earned at work. He decided to invest the money into fabrics and sewing thread. That is when his life turned around and he officially launched his fashion design career, with Avido Fashion House debuting in 2018.

Through his vocational training program that he began, Ochieng equips young mothers and those with hearing disability with tailoring skills. He believes that when you empower a woman, you are building the whole nation. He has started mentoring fifteen trained women — eight have hearing disability while seven are young mothers.

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A post shared by David Avido (@lookslikeavido)

Aside from the vocational training, he has taken upon himself to pay school fees of the bright pupils in his community. He mostly targets the orphans whose parents succumbed to HIV/AIDs virus. He says these students, if not helped, might end up on the streets and succumb to peer pressure resulting in mistaken identities and even lose their lives.

He also makes school uniforms for needy students in Kibera. So far, Ochieng distributed 786 uniforms to pupils in different schools. The process begins with the identification of the beneficiaries, where he randomly visits schools and spots those pupils with tattered uniforms and gives them new ones.Filled with gratitude, Ochieng recalls the very first person he designed clothes for — the late Ken Okoth who was his area member of parliament. He wore his clothes to the parliament attracting celebrities and other politicians to his work.

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A post shared by David Avido (@lookslikeavido)

Afterwards, legendary reggae artist Don Carlos came to perform in Nairobi, and David approached the event’s organizer to allow him make a custom shirt for the artist. When Carlos saw the shirt, he was thrilled and promised Ochieng a partnership to promote his work in the Caribbean. Through that encounter, Ochieng has been able to work with artists like Romain Virgo, Usain Bolt, Bruno Mars, Ghanaian Stallion, Tarrus Riley, Connie, Inge-Lise Nielsen, Everton Blendah, and more. His biggest moment came when was featured in Beyoncé’s album Black King which established his business.

Today, Ochieng’s clothes are worn all over the world over, from Africa to Europe, including the U.S. and the Caribbean. But, for him, African identity is what matters most, and it is reflected in his work and designs.

Source: Okay Africa