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Growing up, it was always a dream for Freddy “Sozinio” Jackson to become a professional fashion designer, and in order to achieve that, he had to answer his calling by enrolling at the Bulawayo Polytechnic majoring in Fashion and Design, before furthering his studies in Dubai.
Inspired by the South African fashion giant David Tlale, Sozinio would toughen up and accept growth and create his self-titled brand Sozinio (after his original surname), a brand which he said was created with love and appreciation of high-end fashion.
Through his brand, the award-winning fashionista has dressed prominent people and models such as Hip Hop sensation Kikky Badass, DJ Zandimaz, Onai Midzi who is an accessory designer, as well as Madam Boss, to mention a few.
Sozinio said it has always been his desire to become a designer.
“Passion comes with opportunities and with that in mind, it became easy for me to find my niche in the fashion industry. I had to take chances from what was missing in the fashion industry, and I established something completely different from other designers in Zimbabwe,” said Sozinio.
Having established a ground in the industry, Sozinio said apart from making orders for big events such as awards and celebrations, he also gets personal gigs from clients for their weddings, birthdays and even baby showers.
“The business never runs out of orders. People around always have functions to attend to such as weddings, lobola negotiations, birthday parties or photo-shoots and modelling events. Hence, I am always hands on in meeting their demands.
“Besides, we are a fashion house, this means we also produce designs and garments that we supply to the market for selling,” said Sozinio.
Covid 19 brought about many challenges amongst creatives and the fashion industry is amongst those that was affected.
During the pandemic period, Sozinio said he learnt a lot about social media during the catastrophic phase, which acquired him skills of making his brand visible.
“Covid 19 made us realise the power of social media platforms because we were able to receive orders and market our brand online.
“Even post Covid 19, we maintained the use of those platforms and I can safely say there is more business online than with physical clients. By combining both, we now have many clients which is very great for our business,” said Sozinio.
Through consistency and commitment towards his work, Sozinio was awarded the Best Designer accolade at 2020 Southern African Development Community (SADC) awards.
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