Startup Story

In pursuit of luxury African excellence, entrepreneur Aurelie Kapinga Tshimbombo and her business Afrinique-Chic, are on a mission to create personal, conscious, sustainable fashion that helps consumers to boldly express their own stories.

LoA chatted to Aurelie this month to find out more….

What does your company do?

Afrinique-Chic is a transcending luxury lifestyle fashion brand which encourages people to discover and embrace their cultures and exceptionality. We strive to show our patrons the business of conscious, sustainable fashion by assisting individuals to dress for what they stand for and boldly tell their story and mind-set through what they choose to wear. We aim to forge a purpose driven, empowering and educational brand that seeks to connect the client and our apparel. We showcase a sense of mindfulness and unity to an aspect of our garment/product that will give our patrons a sense of connection and furthermore encourage awareness, elevating and inspiring them to view themselves as prized individuals of Luxury African Excellence.

We are not in the business of one size or aesthetic fits all garments or products. We value diversity, vision, purpose, emotions, ethicality, education, sustainability, adaptability, the African inspired traditional and yet the modern global world and choose to fuse the above in our apparel and products in order to uplift and empower
our clients. As a fashion lifestyle brand it is our goal to create personal conscious fashion through garments/products of change that seek to instill a mind-set of confidence in self and where you come from, what you stand for, what you seek to achieve. We encourage you to live your legacy through our luxury products - we offer our clients a high level of professionalism. We seek to empower our clients individual brands through our brand, so that they wear their garments with pride and meaning, knowing it was inspired and curated by them and for them.

“We seek to empower our clients individual brands through our brand, so that they wear their garments with pride and meaning, knowing it was inspired and curated by them and for them.”

What inspired you to start your company?

Key words: Legacy building; change; educating; empowering; significance; consciousness; understanding; tolerance; pan-Africanism; collaboration; investing in the individual in order to better the whole and vice-versa; unapolagetic; proud and confident in who you are and where you come from. Changing the African narrative and creating our own paradigm of socio-economic, luxury and societal norms that are inclusive of the new pan-African agenda that is Ubuntu. Being African is not about race or border, it’s about the spirituality of embracing differences and revelling in similarities in order to thrive together and better ourselves.

What we stand for

Love and embrace who you are and where you from in order to define where you are going. When you do so it radiates, and people are drawn to you. We remind our clients that being luxurious, glamorous and stylish is about inner strength, confidence and awareness. We believe in self-care and self-education because it lifts your spirits, boosts morale and broadens your knowledge and therefore confidence and horizons. Rest assured in who you are and regardless of what anyone says or thinks walk in your truth, knowing that you are stunning in your own way. Have fun and be bold as you take on the world!

“Our stories are our voices, and what we create through Afrinique-Chic fashion and lifestyle products, is a different piece of the masterpiece of who we are as a nation and continent.”

What we strive for

To echo the true essence of what it means to be African. Disrupting the status quo and wearing the garment of African pride. Using fashion and lifestyle as a means of communication in order to translate a message of unity through a single piece of material or a distinct design. The question raised is: “What does it mean to be African? “It surely goes beyond skin deep and the geographical location of your birth place. A part of being African is being able to wear this garment of identity that is woven into the very essence of our existence. On the map we recognize Africa being central to the world, and with the tales of history we have seen Africa feed and establish many nations. Therefore, if global change needs to happen, it needs to arise from the carrier of change, and we as the people of the continents through fashion and consciousness are its advocates. We seek to personalize your mind-set to the African luxury lifestyle that tells your contemporary African tale and experience through the Afrinique-Chic garment or product. We place you at the centre and want you to uplift each other as you live out your true meaningful, sustainable, pan African potential.

What makes your business, service or product special?

Our products and services offerings, which include:
-Luxury Haute Couture Atelier Bridal and Evening Wear
-Ready to Wear Women and Men’s Wear
-Accessories
-Home & Living products
-Tailor Made Garments and/or products for individuals or businesses

Fashion and lifestyle is part of our daily air, passions, sub consciousness, consciousness and living and it changes all the time, with events, emotions and decades. You can see and feel the approach of change, mind-set shift or a revolution with and through fashion and lifestyle. You can see, feel, experience, define and even predict everything past, present or future through fashion and lifestyle.

The experience and ethos

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,

We aim to present the African tale through conscious garments and products of change.

“The stories we live and tell provide coherence and meaning and orient our sense of purpose” - Sharon Daloz Parks

Stories are a distinct aspect of our African Heritage - it teaches us the past to trace back our origin, but better yet they teach us how we can enhance the future through learning from our past and applying consciousness to our present. Our stories are our voices and what we create through Afrinique-Chic fashion and lifestyle products, is a different piece of the masterpiece of who we are as a nation and continent. We should celebrate, uplift, educate, live and share who we are as Africans. Life is a medley of clashes and flows as is Afrinique-chic fashion & lifestyle. We thrive in curating limited edition luxury products that tell a subtle story of significance from our proud African continent and the worlds within it, in a modern versatile fashion.

We enjoy combining various modern and traditional cuts and colours, vibrant clashed-up patterns and fabrics, where the true story of the modern African diaspora thrives. We have built an ethos on sustainable, responsible, meaningful educational, multi-functional and adaptable fashion that is curated for you, by you. We make timeless, adaptable, forward thinking yet traditional, mindful luxury fashion and products accessible to women and men in their twenties to late fifties, to become whoever they want to be through their own chosen style. We seek to increase the opportunity for the customer to build their own style within a story and help tell an educational yet stylish tale which advocates them as well as the continent. In short, we create the lifestyle of discerning African excellence with purpose. Love and embrace who you are and where you are from in order to define where you are going.

Tell us a little about your team

Afrinique-Chic is all about empowerment, upliftment and collaboration, and is a proudly female owned company with various collaborative partners. We pride ourselves in working with diversity in terms of age, sex, race and religion, because to work towards a better pan African future we need wisdom and know-how of industry leaders or the elders in communities. We need the ambition, drive for fairness, and global change of the youth to work towards building a conscious world.

Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And, do you come from an entrepreneurial background?

It started with the question: What does it mean to be African? It surely goes beyond skin deep and the geographical location of your birthplace. A part of being African is being able to wear this garment of identity that is woven into the very essence of our existence.On the map we recognize Africa being central to the world and with the tales of history we have seen Africa feed and establish many nations. Therefore, if global change needs to happen, it needs to arise from the carrier of change and we as the people of the continents are its advocates. I could not find anything that spoke to a diverse pan African mindset, style and experience. That spoke to meaning or Ubuntu. That focused on diversity and inclusiveness. That spoke to social and economic issues. That spoke to consciousness with a purpose of generating change and African wealth.

I was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but raised in South Africa and the DRC - a true Pan Africanist at heart. I am a young, dynamic female entrepreneur and the founder of a luxury lifestyle, fashion and company, Afrinique-Chic. I hold a B-tech Honours degree in international communication which has landed me a career within the Diplomatic Corps of South Africa. Fashion has always been my passion, but the core of my business is centred around empowering individuals. I carry a mandate to impact society by creating garments of change. My brand truly aspires to inspire creating tailor made pieces so that each client feel like a masterpiece, allowing what resonates inwardly to be fully portrayed outwardly.

My brand kicked off when I started creating tailor made garments for myself and many people requested I style them, which led to me creating tailor-made garment and wardrobes for various individuals. This lead me into collaborations with renowned South African Fashion brands. I am continuously mastering my craft by collaborating and participating in various fashion shows, as well as social out reach to build my legacy. I constantly echo my heartbeat with the world on celebrating African culture and embracing who we are as Africans. I have managed to let my voice be heard through various media platforms. I was featured in Forbes Africa magazine and Bellissima magazine in DRC, sharing my truth about how African print, pan Africanism and modernity has inspired my journey as a designer. I have been on ENCA showcasing my garments as part of Africa Day Celebration. I have also been a guest on Radio 2000, Tuks fm and Massive Metro.

From a young age, I have always strived to not only become a woman of success, but rather a woman of value, a force to be reckoned with. This being my stepping stone I have partnered with various non-profit organisations in giving back to the community through heading garden projects, sanitary pad and educational tool drives. I am a firm believer in transferring skills and knowledge to others so that they are able to sustain themselves. In light of this belief, my company offers internship opportunities to upcoming designers within the community, collaborates on the I WEAR AFRICA campaign with the Pan African Experience Mechanism organisation, and am always keen to promote and collaborate on projects with like minded businesses, organisations and individuals.

My journey is nowhere near done, as I feel that I have not achieved the actual change that I am trying to establish. I seek to inspire and motivate conscious pro-African excellence mindset shift, economic, social and consumer change, which will lead to world view change and upliftment of our standards in production, manufacturing, society, skills, education and social and economic standings.

“We thrive in curating limited edition luxury products that tell a subtle story of significance from our proud African continent and the worlds within it, in a modern versatile fashion.”

What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?

I have always been fascinated by Africa: its people, its cultures, nature and minerals, and the beauty yet savagery, the hidden meaning and purpose behind it all. I have always been captivated and motivated by the strong women and men in life who I have often likened to African elements in nature as per their character, or how they have bettered the individual in order to better the whole. I always seek to explore, as well as voice, the clash yet flow of Africa and her people as I see it. It’s a combination of “I cannot believe the sights which I am seeing” and a race to wokeness and awareness - everything has a texture, meaning, history and is interconnected.

We hope that through the movement of Afrinique-Chic, we can change the African narrative in the mind of the pan-African consumer and the world to a place where collaboration and defining and creating a system built by us for us can be accepted and respected. We aim to create an African hub geared towards self economic empowerment and social community cohesion where everyone has a role and contributes to economic stability and support. We seek to educate Africans and the world about each other and what African luxury and accountability is all about. We seek to promote game changing conversation that will impact at grass root level the individual who will in turn become more conscious and therefore make conscious decisions that will change the policies and as a result regional and world views. We aim to encourage regional and inter-continental trade.

We seek to create a hub of African Excellence on each continent that will promote, facilitate and educate the world on all services and products that are luxury African. We aim to open schools and holistic spaces and curate initiatives geared towards conscious socio-economic empowerment that will promote self sufficiency and legacy building that will in turn alleviate poverty. An example of such an initiative would be master classes - skills development courses given to a certain number of students per term that will teach them skills in the fashion and lifestyle sector, as well as teach them key foundations of becoming entrepreneurial and to create their own market.

We aim to create a long-lasting mindset and company that stands for self worth, African excellence, practical applied change, consciousness and legacy building that will be referred to as The African luxury brand. We wish to see Afrinique-Chic products world wide and to be able to monetize the movement and change the consumer’s perspective on buying proudly African luxury products.

We seek to encourage businesses within Africa to proudly promote the African country they do business with, in addition to ensuring CSIR that is skills driven in the communities they are in. We seek to change the face of corporate norms in terms of dress codes, corporate gifting, and even office space decor to encourage and reflect the pan African excellence modern experience within their corporate brand framework.

We want to have our brand work toward skill and educational legacy development in partnership with local established businesses, other African countries and international companies within Africa. In essence we are looking for partnership opportunities within the continent and in the international market.

As an African woman, we would like to collaborate with various regional and international partners to showcase, purchase and stock our garments and products. In true African style through the nature of Ubuntu, because “umontu ngumuntu ngabantu", when translated means, "We are who we are, because of others." We want to partner with you so that we can come together in one accord to tell our unique stories and echo our voices. As individual brands we make the sound of one instrument, but as a union we create an orchestra releasing a high pitch on the world stages as they experience true African magic. We aim to expand and make African excellence readily access able to the whole world. Let’s add another page and make history together, so generations can look back and say, that is the night where everything changed, because our story was heard.

What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?

Key words: Creativity, freedom, accountability, knowledge exchange, breaking barriers, the power to affect change and empowerment. The change starts with you because you are the change.

I believe building a strong theme and narratives of consciousness, sustainability, collaboration, communication, understanding, acceptance, change, monetizing legacy building through African excellence is an important part of the process, if not the sole reason for my becoming an entrepreneur and founding Afrinique-Chic.

I wanted to create products and, in turn, a place where having a strong purpose-driven theme to tell a story is really the drive behind any product or collection. I wanted to create thought provoking, purpose driven products that could help the consumer chart their own identity, role and voices in the role of a progressive, empowered, revered, accountable Africa, for Africans and the world. You become so enthused by so many aspects of Africa: its history, nature, resources, cultures within cultures and the role it plays and will continue to do so in the world, that to choose a focal point on a chosen theme and purpose really is quite remarkable. To deliver a collection or product that represents, educates and provokes mind-set change whilst providing sustainable versatile style that empowers and conveys a perceptive luxury modern yet African story of worth is just as thrilling as the end product itself.

To have absolute creative and decision-making power within my own paradigm that will in turn instill actual behavioral change in the consumer, who will then impact policies, the environment or even mind-set and societal change is most rewarding. To be able to meet and steadily challenge a system not built for us by creating our own system/standard that is not built to solely compete with other markets in order to be held in the same regard, but rather to establish and become our own standard of purpose driven accountable luxury living that the world can and will respect is exhilarating.

Challenging and breaking barriers through a distinctively conscious Pan African modern voice to educate about tracing back our origin, how we can enhance the future through learning from our past and applying consciousness to our present. Our stories are our voices and what we create through Afrinique-Chic fashion and lifestyle products, is a different piece of the masterpiece of who we are as an individual, community, nation and continent. We should celebrate, uplift, educate, live and share who we are as Africans and take pride in that. Presenting the African tale through conscious garments and products of change that uplift and empower an individual.

“The stories we live and tell provide coherence and meaning and orient our sense of purpose” - Sharon Daloz Parks

What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?

It’s not enough to 'succeed'. You must ask yourself, what is success? Why do I want or need it? What is the grand purpose? The change starts with you because you are the change! Use your passion and remember you are the foundation and that you hold the purpose of what you are trying to start, therefore you must believe in yourself and challenge yourself whist holding yourself accountable. You need to realize you are not here to compete, but rather to excel and collaborate in order to create a cohesive lane of our own where we as women in business, in society, and the world can thrive! I am successful because we are successful. You are successful because I am successful. We all bring something to the table - now use that to generate conversation, business and then change. We need to remember that as women we have a bigger mandate. You need to know your worth and be rooted in unshakable values that you can build on, then find like-minded fierce women who can help you push that agenda forward whilst empowering yourself as well as them. It is not easy, but honestly what is ever easy for us? We live in a world not built by us or for us or to include our legacies, yet we have survived, we have prospered, we have created and excelled! That is why it is so important to come together and collaborate with other woman to create an inclusive world built by women for all of us, because without you, without us, there is no progression, no change and no success. Know your worth, your value, your role, your ambitions, your mind, your skills and your passions, and make NO APOLOGIES for being yourself or wanting and going after it. You are your own power and you can do it! Go into a room knowing that you are the room. Therefore own it! Just persevere and do not compromise on your value - be proud of who and why you are. Always remember you are not alone and you should reach out and ask for help when you need it - strength, accountability and success in numbers.

Remember, never give up, you can and you will achieve. Run your race at your own pace in a lane you paved for yourself. You are your greatest champion and your sole enemy. Remember that always.

Contact or follow Afrinique-Chic

Why LoA loves it….

At Lionesses of Africa, we love those women entrepreneurs who have a big vision and the energy and ambition to realize that vision. Aurelie Kapinga Tshimbombo is one such entrepreneur. She passionately believes in the power of mindful, luxury fashion to provide a vehicle to empower others and help them to identify their uniqueness and find their voices. This is definitely a woman entrepreneur to watch this year as she embarks on a journey of impact driven business and brand building. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo of Lionesses of Africa