House of Xandria: the Malawian couture house that put inclusion on the runway; now a Création Africa finalist
Eleven years after Xandria Kawanga sewed her first dress by hand at 18, her Lilongwe fashion house is one of 15 finalists in France's Création Africa programme; recognition built on couture, adaptive design and a runway that refuses to leave disabled designers out.
Published 28 October 2026 · 16:10 GMT
The summary
Eleven years after Xandria Kawanga sewed her first dress by hand at 18, her Lilongwe fashion house is one of 15 finalists in France's Création Africa programme; recognition built on couture, adaptive design and a runway that refuses to leave disabled designers out. On 28 October 2026, the Daily Maverick profiled House of Xandria as one of 15 finalists in Création Africa, the France-backed programme for creative entrepreneurs in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi.
The three lenses
- WestWest; From Paris, Création Africa reads as cultural diplomacy with an investment thesis.
- EastEast; No dedicated East-outlet report on this story was found in searches of CNA, The Hindu, NHK and Kyodo; the East perspective here is therefore analytical, not cited reporting.
- Global SouthSouth; From Lilongwe and Johannesburg, the story reads first as recognition and second as a challenge.
Key facts
- On 28 October 2026, the Daily Maverick profiled House of Xandria as one of 15 finalists in Création Africa, the France-backed programme for creative entrepreneurs in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi. Daily Maverick (Oct 28, 2026)
- House of Xandria was founded in 2015 by Xandria Kawanga, then 18, who sewed a little black dress by hand, photographed a friend wearing it and posted it on Facebook; orders followed at once. Daily Maverick (Oct 28, 2026)
- The French Institute of South Africa lists Xandria among its Création Africa Top 50, describing House of Xandria as a luxury fashion house combining couture craftsmanship with empowerment, inclusion and cultural pride. French Institute of South Africa (Feb 6, 2026)
- Programme reporting puts the Création Africa 2 funnel at 340 applications, 50 ventures mentored and 15 finalists advancing to incubation; not the 'more than 700' applicants cited in the Daily Maverick profile. BizCommunity (Aug 20, 2026)
- Kawanga's All Shades of Beautiful show, launched in 2021, was Malawi's first inclusive runway, giving models and designers with disabilities centre stage; it began with 20 designers and is now in its fourth year. Daily Maverick (Oct 28, 2026)
- Malawi's creative industry contributes K28 billion to GDP, about 0.4 percent, according to University of Malawi research presented to President Lazarus Chakwera; the economic backdrop to the fashion house's rise. The Times Group (2024)
What did a Lilongwe fashion house just win a place in?
A profile published by the Daily Maverick on 28 October 2026 presents House of Xandria as one of 15 finalists in Création Africa, the programme that backs emerging cultural and creative entrepreneurs in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi. The initiative comes from the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of France in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi, and the French Institute of South Africa, with UVU Africa delivering the mentoring and incubation through its CAPACITI platform under Team France oversight. The finalists are completing a seven-month incubation designed to make their businesses investment-ready, with access to investor networks, sector specialists and funding guidance. Five of the fifteen work in fashion, and House of Xandria is the Malawian name among them. Women make up 67 percent of the final cohort. Readers following the region's investment story may also note how Morocco's investment ranking has shifted the continent's capital map; the same contest for investable African businesses, seen from the north.
What does the record show about the house itself?
The story starts in 2015, when Kawanga was 18. She sewed a little black dress entirely by hand, photographed a friend wearing it and posted the picture on Facebook. Orders followed immediately, and what began as an independent studio in Lilongwe is now, in the Daily Maverick's phrase, an internationally recognised creative force. The house makes high-end bespoke and ready-to-wear garments, runs a showroom in the Malawian capital and employs 15 people. Its client list runs from Tiwa Savage, the Nigerian singer known as the Queen of Afrobeats, and South African celebrity Khanyi Mbau, to the Malawian hip-hop artist Gwamba and, closer to home, Malawian ministers, mayors and celebrities. In 2020 the brand went viral with a dress made entirely from recycled newspapers, a wearable statement for environmental sustainability that broke with the usual reliance on Chitenge wax print. The business has since branched into tailored menswear as Xandria.Man and into interiors as Xandria.Home, which manages projects from visual concept to construction and final styling. A separate venture, Fabric Universe, supplies rare couture materials to local designers, bridal clients and tailors. Kawanga says the house is now exploring producing its own fabrics in Malawi from banana fibre.
What do the published accounts not yet settle?
The most visible gap is arithmetic. The Daily Maverick profile says House of Xandria was selected as one of 15 finalists from more than 700 applicants. The programme's own releases and trade reporting describe a different funnel for Création Africa 2: 340 applications, 50 ventures chosen for a seven-week mentorship, then 15 finalists after a final round of pitches. Both figures cannot describe the same intake in the same way, and neither account explains the other. Possible readings exist, a wider expression-of-interest pool, or a count spanning more than one edition, but no published source confirms one, so this article reports the programme's own funnel and flags the profile's figure as uncorroborated rather than repeating it as fact. Money is the second gap. Call documents for the programme put leverage grants for the selected projects at €15,000 to €30,000, set by the incubator and jury according to need and potential, but no per-finalist amount has been published for House of Xandria. Third, the banana-fibre project is described only as exploration: no production volumes, partners or timelines are on record. Fourth, the incubation's concrete outcomes, investment raised, retail placements secured, jobs created, will only be measurable after the showcase phase closes.
Why does a fashion finalist matter beyond the runway?
Because the creative economy in Malawi is small in the statistics and large in the argument about what development looks like. Research by the University of Malawi, presented to President Lazarus Chakwera, put the creative industry's contribution at K28 billion, about 0.4 percent of GDP; a modest share that nonetheless represents thousands of livelihoods in music, design, film and craft that rarely appear in investment prospectuses. A fashion house that employs 15 people, supplies other designers through a textile shop and builds a runway for disabled talent is, at that scale, industrial policy in miniature. And the inclusion record is the sharpest edge of the story. Designers and models with disabilities in Malawi have long faced social exclusion and discrimination, Kawanga says, and securing corporate backing and public acceptance for adaptive fashion took years of advocacy. A finalist slot does not settle that struggle, but it moves it from the margins of a national fashion conversation to a regional investment stage. The question now is whether the pipeline treats inclusion as a brand asset or as a durable market; adaptive features such as magnetic buttons, elastic waistbands and side zippers, documented by Malawian reporting, only matter if buyers and funders keep paying for them.
What does the Création Africa filter actually reward?
Read the programme's own documents and the filter looks less like a prize than like an admissions process. Fifty ventures are mentored, fifteen are incubated, and the stated goal throughout is investment readiness: business models strengthened, value propositions refined, funding readiness built. The Lesotho Tribune's assessment is blunt; this is not a celebration of culture but a calculation, an attempt to insert often-informal creative businesses into systems of capital, mentorship and market access. It also explains the tension running under the good news. A France-backed jury and a France-overseen incubator decide which Southern African creativity is investable, and the Daily Maverick's own disclosure sharpens the point: its Création Africa writing is made possible in partnership with the French Institute of South Africa. Readers should hold both facts at once. The programme's support is real, mentorship, networks, grants, a France immersion trip, and so is the asymmetry: the region's creative talent is being ranked by a pipeline whose capital and final jury sit elsewhere. The test of the model is whether finalists emerge with businesses that can stand without it, including the unglamorous capacity Kawanga names as her biggest hurdle: local fabric manufacturing, without which every gown depends on imported textiles, higher costs and fragile timelines.
What happens if the pipeline works; and if it does not?
If it works, the second-order effects are concrete. A banana-fibre fabric line would give Malawi a local input where none exists, cutting import dependence and giving other designers a domestic supplier. Fabric Universe already plays that role for imported couture materials; a Malawian-made fibre would extend it. Retail and export placements would convert a 15-person atelier into a larger employer, and the All Shades of Beautiful platform would gain sponsors beyond the advocacy budgets that have sustained it. If it does not work, the risks are equally concrete. Finalists could emerge with sharper pitch decks but no buyers, dependent on the next foreign programme cycle rather than on domestic demand. Talent could drain toward the investor markets the pipeline opens, with the region keeping the story and losing the business. And inclusion could narrow to a showcase category: adaptive fashion celebrated on a runway while disabled designers still struggle for equipment, training and shelf space. The earlier Création Africa story about a fashion-focused consultancy showed the same structural gap from the other side; designers who need business infrastructure, not just applause.
What should readers watch before the showcase season closes?
Four markers are worth watching. First, the incubation close-out: investor roundtables and product showcases under the Creation Africa Days banner, and the France immersion trip for the fifteen, where the finalists meet stakeholders, investors and industry peers. Second, any published account of what each finalist raised or placed; the programme has not yet published per-finalist outcomes, and those numbers are the real scoreboard. Third, the next edition of All Shades of Beautiful: whether it grows beyond its Lilongwe and Blantyre editions, whether disabled designers remain central rather than decorative, and whether sponsors follow the Création Africa spotlight. Fourth, the banana-fibre project: a pilot, a partner or a production date would turn an aspiration into evidence. Readers tracking the continent's wider economic integration should also watch how the AfCFTA agenda is reshaping cross-border business, since a Malawian fashion house selling into African retail will live or die by those corridors.
The three lenses
West Lens:
West; From Paris, Création Africa reads as cultural diplomacy with an investment thesis. The French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, its embassy and the French Institute do not present the programme as aid: they present it as enterprise development, with a jury, a mentorship funnel, leverage grants and a France immersion trip at the end. The Western lens therefore asks whether the pipeline produces companies that European and global investors can underwrite; and treats a Malawian couture house with celebrity clients and diversified lines as exactly the kind of investable story the model was built to find.
East Lens:
East; No dedicated East-outlet report on this story was found in searches of CNA, The Hindu, NHK and Kyodo; the East perspective here is therefore analytical, not cited reporting. Read comparatively, the Malawian case poses the same question East Asian creative-industry policy answered a generation ago: can the state turn culture into an export industry without capturing it? South Korea and Japan built global creative exports through sustained public investment in training, distribution and intellectual property; infrastructure, not showcases.
South Lens:
South, From Lilongwe and Johannesburg, the story reads first as recognition and second as a challenge. Malawian reporting has followed Kawanga for years, the inclusive runway's editions, the adaptive-design advocacy, the sign-language interpreters at every show; so the finalist slot lands on a record the local press already knows, not on a novelty. The Lesotho Tribune's sceptical note is the necessary counterweight: a pipeline that ranks creativity is also a pipeline that can narrow it, rewarding what investors recognise and sidelining what they do not.
The consensus
- What we agree on
- What we agree on: House of Xandria, founded in Lilongwe in 2015 by Xandria Kawanga, is one of the 15 finalists of Création Africa 2, the France-backed programme for creative entrepreneurs in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi; a rise built on high-end couture and on All Shades of Beautiful, Malawi's first inclusive runway.
- What we don't agree on
- What we disagree on: how many applied. The Daily Maverick profile describes the finalists as chosen from 'more than 700' applicants, while the programme's own releases and trade reporting put the Création Africa 2 intake at 340 applications, narrowed to 50 mentored ventures and then 15 finalists.
- What we know
- What we know: Kawanga launched the brand at 18 with a hand-sewn dress posted on Facebook; the house now runs a Lilongwe showroom with 15 staff, dresses figures from Tiwa Savage to Malawian ministers, went viral in 2020 with a dress made of recycled newspapers, and has expanded into menswear (Xandria.Man), interiors (Xandria.Home) and a textile shop (Fabric Universe).
- What we don't know yet
- What we do not know yet: what each finalist's incubation delivers in money and market access; call documents put leverage grants at €15,000 to €30,000, but no per-finalist figure is published; whether the banana-fibre fabric project moves beyond exploration; and whether the pipeline converts into durable jobs and local production capacity.
- What we expect
- What we expect: the incubation phase, reported as running to October 2026, to close with investor showcases and a France immersion trip for the finalists; the next edition of All Shades of Beautiful to test whether inclusion stays central as the brand scales; and the applicant-count gap to be clarified the next time the programme publishes its funnel.
Questions, answered
What is Création Africa?
Création Africa is a programme of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Embassy of France in South Africa, Lesotho and Malawi, and the French Institute of South Africa. It supports cultural and creative entrepreneurs in the three countries through mentorship and incubation, aiming to make their businesses investment-ready. Its second edition selected 50 ventures for mentoring and 15 finalists for a longer incubation with investor access.
Who is Xandria Kawanga and what is House of Xandria?
Xandria Kawanga, also known as Chikondi Kawanga, is a Malawian fashion designer based in Lilongwe. She founded House of Xandria in 2015 at 18, after a hand-sewn dress she posted on Facebook drew immediate orders. The house produces high-end bespoke and ready-to-wear garments for men and women, runs a Lilongwe showroom with 15 staff, and has expanded into menswear, interiors and a textile shop.
What is All Shades of Beautiful?
All Shades of Beautiful is Kawanga's inclusive fashion platform, launched in 2021 as Malawi's first runway where models and designers with disabilities took centre stage. It began with 20 designers and is now in its fourth year, with later editions adding plus-size models and sign-language interpreters at every show. Malawian reporting describes it as a campaign for adaptive fashion, using features like magnetic buttons and elastic waistbands.
Why do published applicant numbers for Création Africa differ?
The Daily Maverick profile says House of Xandria was chosen from more than 700 applicants, while the programme's own releases and trade reporting put the second edition's intake at 340 applications, narrowed to 50 mentored ventures and then 15 finalists. No published source reconciles the two figures. This article therefore uses the programme's own funnel and flags the higher figure as uncorroborated, rather than repeating it as fact.
Sources
- Daily Maverick (Oct 28, 2026)
- French Institute of South Africa (Feb 6, 2026)
- BizCommunity (Aug 20, 2026)
- The Times Group (2024)