Designer faces embezzlement rap

Peter Matika Senior Leisure Reporter
IN a rather unprecedented turn of events one of Bulawayo’s revered style icon and rising entrepreneur — Gilmore Moyo — has been accused of pilfering funds which were meant to cater for a group of designers’ trip to Canada in August last year.The funds were reportedly meant to cater for their travel expenses among other needs ahead of the trip, where they were expected to attend the African Fashion Week in Toronto to showcase their designs among many other countries. These accusations arise amid rumours that there could be a possible feud in the fashion industry, where Moyo is actively involved and is said to be an element creating despondency and disharmony among stakeholders.

In an interview with Sunday Leisure, designers who approached this paper accused Moyo of hijacking their ideas, as a way of enriching and promoting himself.

“Gilmore isn’t what people perceive him to be. He is a con artist and he is creating rifts in the fashion industry. Last year a group of models were supposed to travel to Canada for a show but the trip failed to materialise after he embezzled funds donated by people. Instead only one person went and we are not sure whether the person really attended the show as they are related,” said a designer who preferred anonymity.  The only designer who managed to attend the fashion event was local jewellery designer Sheena Moyo popularly known in the fashion industry as Blinq.

She, however, told Sunday Leisure that she sourced most of the money for the trip herself and was in debt as she had borrowed some of the money from various people.

“People never came through. I personally still owe people for that trip. I paid for myself. The funds that were raised were not enough. Money doesn’t amount to anything, this is just a case of people trying to make noise and tarnish images at the end of the day. People are just bitter, even big companies turned us down,” she said.

Another designer claimed that Moyo was at loggerheads with one of the funders resident in Victoria Falls.

“There was a big sponsor from Vic Falls. We are not really sure how much he donated but we understand it was a substantial amount enough to cover a whole lot of expenses. He chose not to inform us of what was happening money-wise. He even went as far as opening an account for people to donate money but he claims that it was a dead horse as people never responded.

“We do not know the truth as we had no access to the account and only he knows what happened to the money if indeed people donated. We only thought he was supposed to own up and tell the world how much was donated so that people will have confidence in their future dealings with us,” said another designer.

Moyo had no kind words at the accusations which he said were fascinating, preposterous and baseless, stating that the funds that were donated in the first place were too meagre to finance anything.

Responding via email he explained his side of the story.

“I am sure you already know that three designers were meant to go and showcase in Canada and this resulted in each of them having a budget of $2 500. The idea of the fundraising was to assist them raise part of the money to showcase their collections, hence a few individuals and I embarked on the fundraising so as to assist. As much as we would have loved to promote local designers and raise all the money required for them to go, all our efforts resulted in inadequate funds raised. At the end of it all, $576 came through from our efforts.

“Two of the designers had their personal savings, which they topped up to pay $700 each for participation; hence there was still a challenge in getting everyone on board,” said Moyo in an e-mail.

He added that the idea to raise the funds through opening an account was a personal initiative as no one had a sole obligation and or was prepared let alone willing to raise the funds for the designers.

“It is really interesting that there are individuals that have an issue with it, if they donated enough money for the designers, they have every right to confront. I don’t know where all this is coming from, but it is really interesting,” he said.

The African Fashion Week Toronto is a fashion exhibition used as a spring board for students, emerging and experienced designers to showcase their designs as well as a platform to share ideas on how best to improve their fashion designs.