Kayla Kim Meiring and Loreal Brown. Photo by Margo Fortune.
5 December 2012
Kayla Kim Meiring is the founder of Fro, a company that started off selling vintage clothing but now sells Meiring’s own homespun popular clothes.
Vintage clothing is clothing from the 1980s and 1990s. Fro takes these clothes and reworks them. These clothes are popular with youth.
Meiring started the company at the age of 19 while she was taking a gap year after school. At the time she started Fro it was just friends and family supporting her. Then she started a Facebook page where people could buy online.
“What inspired me was when I worked in a clothing store and young girls couldn’t always find the styles. As a young girl I always wanted to be different when it came to style. That is why I started growing my hair Afro-style and not having the straight hair look. And that’s also where the name Fro came from. I started selling the vintage clothing at markets in Long Street. This year a friend of mine, Loreal Brown, got back from Australia and joined me. We decided to promote our own designs and not buy vintage clothing anymore. So basically the brand Fro expanded to be bigger and better. The Lot clothing store as well as other small businesses sell Fro.”
Meiring is excited because on 15 December, Fro will be selling their clothes at a night market at the Cape Cape Town International Convention Centre. They will also be collecting toys for charity to give to kids at Christmas.
Next year Meiring will be studying fashion full-time but she will still be designing and running the Fro brand.
Meiring has advice for young people who want to start similar businesses, “Just be yourself. Find your own style. If you good at it follow your goal.”