While Milan, Paris, and London tend to rock the fashion headlines, cities all over the world are hotbeds of style. In Vancouver, events like Spend on Trend (see Chic of the Week) and Portobello West provide a stage for emerging designers. Sydney, Australia, has its weekly Paddington Market. And, across South Africa, there’s a movement called “Local is lekker”—lekker being local Afrikaans slang for “good”, explains Larainne Kaplan. “Dress local, buy local, manufacture local.”

Kaplan runs LK Collections, a Vancouver-based company that imports and distributes a number of fashion labels, including that of designer Colleen Eitzen, a fellow South African whom she represents exclusively in Canada.

Her background in social work, focusing on abused women and domestic violence, means that, for Kaplan, “Whatever I do, I like it to have some sort of social responsibility.” South African CMTs—“cut, make, and trim” factories—have lost thousands of jobs to cheaper offshore manufacturing, she says, while lines such as Eitzen’s create work for small factories.

Kaplan describes Eitzen’s approach as “sophisticated with a funky twist”, and her own outfit exemplifies it: a black wrap dress made of a soft cotton-viscose blend worn over a grey scoop-neck top and leggings. “Her fit is amazing,” says Kaplan, indicating how the fabric is gathered to the bands that edge the neck to add sensuous shape to the drape. This piece is from last season’s collection, as is the black waist-conscious peplum jacket Kaplan often puts with it.

One difference she’s noted between Canadian and South African fashion is that there, “They try to pay homage to their roots,” but within reason, she stresses. A traditional shweshwe print wouldn’t work in North America because “It’s a bold, very African print. It’s understood there.” True enough. Unless they’re handled with sensitivity and taste (ask anyone who’s brought a hibiscus-patterned muumuu back from Maui), local influences can look glaringly out of place outside their country of origin.

Eitzen gets it right, taking one of South Africa’s national flowers, the Strelitzia—commonly called the bird-of-paradise—and editing it with smarts and sensitivity into a softer-hued version of the original. She outlines it in taupe braid on the back of a black jacket. She also transforms the flower into an abstract print in shades of taupe, grey, and brown to use on a white cotton maxi dress. An Empire cut with drawstrings at bust level and at the tops of its pockets makes it casual, and three bands of silver lamé near the hem dress it up.

Kaplan pegs the versatile style as “going to weddings or going to Mexico”. The same pockets, bust shaping, crisscross straps, and easygoing attitude show up in a cotton pinafore dress, this time patterned in vertical stripes of taupe and grey. Separated by a band of silver lamé, the frill at the hem is in a narrower stripe in the same colours.

Eitzen riffs on the same fabric and details throughout her spring-summer ’08 collection. (Check it out at www.colleeneitzen.co.za/.) The thinner stripe of the pinafore dress reappears as button loops and pleat inserts on a cropped, high-buttoning, short-sleeved jacket in the palest taupe tone-on-tone striped cotton. It shows up again as the waistband of an enchanting Midsummer Night’s Dream of a knee-length frilled skirt that features six layers—alternating between two patterns of lace—in the same whispery taupe. Kaplan says the runway show paired this skirt with a side-gathered tank top in silvery teal, pulling other garments from her display rack to show how attractively the jacket works with the tank top and softly pleated white linen pants.

A silver-lit version of the Strelitzia print appears near the hem of a white skirt and as the huge pockets and the yoke of a white, ’60s-style shift. Silver lamé lines a skirt waistband and is cut into inserts for a matching jacket. A gleaming band of fabric separates the white and natural-coloured linens at the hem of a wrap dress. “A little bit of glitz and glam…but it’s wearable,” says Kaplan. And, just as this isn’t Vegas-style bling and flash, design details are low-key. While the pieces are obviously designed to go beautifully together, any one would go comfortably with the clothes you already own.

Given that she lives only two blocks from the Main Street fashion hub, would Kaplan ever think of exporting our local lines to South Africa? She says she would like to, but that the exchange rate would make it expensive. On the other hand, she says that while “Colleen is quite high-end [there], here it’s not completely off the grid.”

Priced between $98 and $240, the label hangs on the racks at Devil May Wear (198 East 21st Avenue), Fine Finds (1014 Mainland Street), and Riot Clothing and Accessories (1395 Commercial Drive).