It’s a long way from South Sudan to Alice Springs, but that hasn’t stopped Nyibany Mayom Tulba’s fashion designs from being noticed in both places.
The Point Cook resident, who ran her own bridal and evening wear boutique in South Sudan for three years, has been invited to take part in Alice Springs’s Yapa Styles Fashion Show later this month.
The show will bring together indigenous and African designers, aiming to encourage a new generation of fashionistas.
“I would love to inspire the next generation of Africans,’’ Ms Tulba says.
‘‘I want to show them you can wear your African dress and be modern.’’
The Yapa show is just one of the opportunities Ms Tulba, 27, will have to showcase her designs this year.
She has also been invited to take part in Melbourne Spring Fashion Week in September and Positive Runway in July, which aims to raise money to fight the spread of AIDS.
“About 35,000 people will be there, including people like Naomi Campbell,’’ Ms Tulba says.
‘‘I really pray that this year things will take off. The show in Alice Springs will be the biggest showcase of my designs yet.”
Ms Tulba’s interest in fashion began as a child, when she would save up her pocket money to buy fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. At the advice of her father, she put her fashion aspirations aside to study media and communications at Griffith University. But after moving back to South Sudan to work as a news anchor, she decided to create her own fashion line. “I wore my own designs on television and people would ask me in the street where I got my clothes from.’’
Ms Tulba has also been involved in South Sudan’s fashion week, dressed the country’s Miss World finalist and hosted the South Sudanese version of Next Top Model.
On her return to Australia, she began designing a range of children’s clothes to encourage African children to embrace their heritage. “My mum would bring my daughter back from Africa and she wouldn’t wear them because they were not fashionable, so I thought why not combine them?
“I take a lot of inspiration from my culture.”
