Kiara Dandridge

I am a 24 year old South African woman trying to make a mark on the creative world. Ever since I can remember I have wanted to translated my visions into art & reality, and to portray the world in all its artisanal distinction. For me, at 18 months old, that meant to express myself through my outfits, when I stood one morning with my hands on my hips vivaciously telling my mother “you no dress me!”. Alongside, growing my love of fashion design and styling, were my artistic talents, illustrating and painting and in grade 11 found a love for oil painting. In matric I entered some paintings into the kearsney arts festival whereby one of my painting represented the ad for the festival in two local newspapers. As I've always known what career I wanted to pursue, after High School I went straight to study a fashion design degree - completed at Inscape Education Group.  

During my studies, in 2020 I created a Tik Tok account to showcase my 3rd year work, which did well at an overall of 229.9k likes with one video reaching 527.5k views. On top of fashion, video content and oil painting, I do also enjoy illustrating.. During college at the beginning of each term an in-depth software course photoshop, illustrator and indesign was done which translated to a world of digital art as well! Any type of artistic activity I ultimately enjoy. Whilst I have a quiet and shy demeanour, I am confident in my ideas and getting them across to the right people is very important to me.

I have recently made the move down to Cape Town from Durban as I have felt Durban has a more corporate environment and I felt the cape has more to offer creatively. I very much enjoy conceptualising, innovating as well as solving design problems. The move to the Cape is motivated by the ability to create work used for higher platforms than what was available in my location/environment. 

I plan on creating my own brand one day; I have done research and a practice brand posted on instagram to gauge reaction and engagement (@femea_bykiara).  I have worked with a fellow fashion designer friend of mine who has his own brand doing small tasks, learning a lot as well as doing independent modelling along the way. I do alterations and commissions based on word of mouth and worked in the service industry as a waitress and bar tender.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know me through the ‘art of text’, I hope that you would consider me for a creative position in your business.