It wouldn’t have been SA Fashion Week (April 11-15) without a nipple or two peeking through sheer fabric, girls on stilts, boys channeling Filipino superstar fashion blogger Bryan Boy with a clutch bag in one outstretched arm and lots of jostling for tickets and attention…
Black Coffee’s Congolese Kuba-cloth-inspired collection
Pimville
The photographs make you look twice. First because they are pretty, stylized shots, speaking the language of fashion photography, and then again because of their setting.
Pimville, Kliptown and Orlando in Soweto, Alexandra are not usually names that conjure the hipster lifestyle, freedom, beauty, or high fashion. Continue reading
Sophia Loren is looking at me. And she is entrancing. An extremely realistic portrait of her by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz – created by the arrangement of around 3000 thousand glittering loose diamonds photographed on a page – hangs in De Beers Headquarters on London’s Charterhouse Street.
Part of Muniz’s “Diamond Divas” series of glamorous Hollywood legends – the artwork sums up only a facet of what diamonds have come to represent.
Sofia Loren 'Diamond Diva' by Vik Muniz
The building’s very corporate facade had given no hint of its business, that it houses the world’s leading diamond supplier. Although I am not sure what I was expecting. A giant shiny rock to light my way through the rain-soaked streets? This is on my mind because exiting the tube station that morning I stopped a man in a suit to ask if he knew where “De Beers” was and he directed me to a pub. Continue reading
Rubicon. Photo © www.planetivan.com
Boys with clutch bags, lots of fiery red chic bobs and dresses cut to way up to there with heels to match signalled the opening of SA Fashion Week – and that’s just the scene in the lobby of The Rosebank Crowne Plaza, the site of Joburg’s real fashion week. And phones, darling, lots and lots of smartphones, snapping photos, texting, tweeting, waving in the air, videoing the shows, easing social awkwardness, amusing people during the long wait for it all to start and shining out in the darkness. I tried to remember what we all did before we had them – and recalled smoking Camel filters. Still haven’t decided which would be the healthier habit. Continue reading
“What’s your top seller?” I ask Fatima Nanabhay of the African Music Store near Diagonal Street in Joburg’s city centre. “The goat bells,” she says. At R14 a piece they fly out the shop. Cow bells are also a big hit, she tells me. As I ask the question the only thing flying past us is the traffic along the city street and the guy wheeling a trolley with blankets piled high past the doorway. For the record there’s not a goat to be seen.
It’s the Art Fair. It’s the Art Fair. I don’t usually blog pre- an event, preferring to experience it for myself before I tell anyone it’s worth doing. But the FNB Joburg Art Fair is a sure thing. Opening night (by invitation only) happens tomorrow and then from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon there’s art and more art, framed and named, performances, appearances, talks of all sorts and lots of of other things in between.
Mikhael Subotzky & Patrick Waterhouse, Blue Ponte / Red Ponte I – IX, 2011
Thursday night I spent surrounded by Joburg’s fashion set at the Marie Claire Prix D’Excellence del la Mode 2011, which if my French serves me (until now I could say goodbye, cat, French Revolution, let them eat cake! and enjoy your meal) means Marie Claire’s prize for supremely excellent fashion and all things fashionable.
The fashion set are an interesting crew – with flamboyant titles that match their taste in accessories. Among the judges were a “fashion architect” and a “fashion council member”. No fashion grand wizard or fashion supreme leader but that’s probably coming next year. As for me – I am a “fashion user”, committed to getting the occasional rush.
Skyline Gardens, Braamfontein. The photo is from SouthPoint Hospitality
I have been remiss. A bad blogger. A blog is like a Tamagotchi. It needs to be fed to be kept alive. Actually a blogger is like a Tamagotchi too, hungry. So in a world of free content where most bloggers write out of love (and occasionally ego) an invitation to dinner is a supreme event.
welcome from @missmillib
The invitation from mememe and Two, one of my favourite stores arrived by email – addressed to “Dear cool people of Joburg” (I was never going to resist. At my age it could be injurious). Continue reading
Among reports of the northern territories melting down and concerns over the start of the Formula 1 season (Bahrain has bigger problems) and Muammar Gadaffi, the man of many names not to mention many fashion statements, sharing headline space with Charlie Sheen for the “who is the craziest award” this is too good not to share.
Continue reading
Day 2 of the Design Indaba and I am a believer. All critical distance (well most of it) has been removed and I feel myself edging closer to groupie-dom. If I was to be a groupie on this day these are three people I would groupie around:
Knitwear designed by Laduma Ngxokolo
Eastern Cape designer Laduma Ngxokolo, a graduate of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, who, among a global group of emerging young talent, made that Pecha Kucha format his own. Following that quick format here’s my cut-to-the-chase version.
As part of the ritual of becoming a man young Xhosa circumcision initiates have to kit themselves out in a new wardrobe (all clothing worn before this stage is destroyed – I think, or removed at least, I hope)
After they return their parents like to buy them “high quality men’s knitwear” from international brands like Pringle as even circumcision initiates are highly influenced by global urban style.
Ngxokolo saw the gap. Continue reading
