You will recall, last year’s Africa Fashion Week was co-branded by the African style glossy magazine Arise. A press release sent out at the end of last year said that relationship was no more.

However, Dr Precious Moloi Motsepe, Chairperson of African Fashion International maintained, “We remain focused on maximizing the enormous potential Africa FashionWeek has shown, and the impact Cape Town Fashion Week continues to have on the industry.”

And so the show went on. AfriPOP! was  at the Joburg leg which kicked off last week Wednesday, and also at the Africa Fashion Awards which brought things to an interesting close.

For those of you who missed our twitter run down (really you should be following us by now: www.twitter.com/afripopmag), a brief summation of the awards ceremony.

I’ll start right off by saying as it is, the fashion crowd generally fancies itself too cool for anything. It’s just not the ideal conduit for any kind of vibe. Obviously not so for the bright spark in production who, right after Dr Motsepe’s opening address, saw it fit to hurl at the audience South African rock group Crashcarburn, who did absolutely nothing to help set the tone for the evening.

Performances by Nigerian rappers Sasha P and Naeto C received a similar indifference but at least, they bore relevance to the event.

We spotted K’Naan in the crowd mingling with models and even half hoped they’d bring him on even if it was for that Coca-Cola anthem we’ve grown tired of 25 versions later. He did come on stage. But it was only to present Edward Enningful with the award for best contribution to styling.  Edward wasn’t there.  And wherever she was, Grace Jones will be thrilled to know she won the Miriam Makeba style icon award.

This became a common theme for the rest of the evening as  bizarre categories were announced such as designer of the year international , not to be confused with designer of the year. Black Coffee took the latter, and Duro Olowu took the former. Duro wasn’t around. Nor was Ozwald Boateng who had earlier bagged the menswear international designer of the year in absentia. Michael Jackson, Boateng and Andre 3000 were all up for the male style influencer of the year. Michael won. And while he couldn’t attend for obvious reasons, South African pop/folk singer Selaelo Selota channeled his spirit with an energetic performance, also including some elements of James Brown. He was pretty impressive.

So, it wasn’t all bad after all. The dessert was banging and shiny suit-clad Ghanaian reggae star Samini managed to bring some of the crowd to their feet, and one of our favourite designers Bunmi Koko (who also won emerging designer of the year) announced that her designs will be available at Harrod’s.

But hopefully next year, more class, more attendees and less tack.

It’s gotta be said that cute as Sessilee Lopez is, and deserving of model of the year award (presented by Yasmin Warsame) my girl needs an etiquette class in how to be graceful before a live audience.

By the time house music outfit Liquideep came on to close the show, with their gentle anthem Fairytale, the crowd was all too happy to receive them and their male dancers dressed up as fairies…

Have a browse below at AfriPOP’S picks of the best looks on the runway for Africa Fashion Week 2010