Though Zaftig is indeed the culmination of hours of hard work by an amazing team, it is the brainchild of a very unexpected source – two colleagues with very different backgrounds and life experiences.

At CA Publications we are very much team-bound and strongly believe in and practice a participatory decision-making process. We believe that everyone involved in our company shares the same values and work ethics; understands and agrees with the company ethos and has the common goal of only wanting the best for our readers. To ensure that we are still on the same page, we gather on a weekly basis to determine whether there are any new developments in the society around us that we need to be aware of/take into consideration when making policy decisions, etc. During these sessions, we also look at what we can do to make the ASV experience more pleasurable for our readers and discuss issues affecting our readers directly and/or indirectly – things that were told to us or things we might have picked up in our interactions with our valued readers.

During one such a gathering in early September, every single discussion we had, ended up coming back to fashion – or rather the dichotomy in the Fashion Industry globally. The discrepancy between fast fashion [latest trends, colours, etc] every season and yet, they advocate responsible consumerism. Looking at all the current buzzwords in the industry -`sustainable fashion’, `capsule ward robing’, `responsible consumerism’ and`conscious shopping’, we acknowledge the admirability of these buzzwords as ideals. However, we came to the sad conclusion that, the inherent nature of the fashion industry is excluding and discriminatory. A good example is, looking at models generally showcasing clothes - usually thin, apparently flawless beautiful people, while most consumers are `normal’ people.

Listening to the shopping experience of one of our team members who,like 79% of the South African population falls in the plus-size category in terms of clothes, made us, for the first time, aware of the struggle,humiliation and prejudice this segment of our society, the majority, is subjected to on a daily basis when trying to find comfortable yet fashionable clothes that will make them look and feel good about themselves.

Tasked with researching the fashion industry globally, our Business Development Manager, Mpumelelo Vanga [aka Comrade], and our Office Manager,Dillon Canem, who would surely be seen as the two least obvious fashion conscious team members, came up with the concept of Zaftig. Based on their research, we have found the need for Zaftig and, collaborating with various role players in the local fashion industry, we refined the concept and today we are proud to be part of this initiative.