Giving new life to old and discarded rubber is what drives Paarl-based maker and creator, Roché van den Berg. She works magic with old rubber. She started her upcycling business Roche. Recycle. Relove creating wearable and usable art in 2006. Roché runs skills development programmes and…
Here’s a quick thought experience. In your closet, what is the item you’ve had the longest? No cheating with wedding dresses or sentimental baby clothes - it needs to be an item you can or do still wear. I have a pair of flannel pajama…
It would come as no surprise to anyone that knows her that Nicole Sherwin is the founder of a natural, clean beauty brand. The child of a homeopath, Nicole's lifelong passion has been health and wellness. During her five-year stay in Los Angeles, Nicole started…
Everyone in the SA Fashion Week office in Rosebank is wearing black. Founder and director Lucilla Booyzen is trim, her neatly cut red hair lightly touches her shoulders. She wears a cardigan, black of course, which, she says, has been in her wardrobe for many…
Spiritgirl Active Wear, a South African brand, uses recycled polyethylene terephthalate bottles to create fun, yoga wear. Founded by Leigh Sarembock and Rochele le Roux in November 2015, they have captured the hearts and minds of many an eco-warrior yoga lover. In this Q&A, they…
Two new collections of jewellery, one released recently by SMITH Jewellery and the other by PICHULIK, speak to summer days and happiness, both feature seashells and refer to memories of the sea. At a time when there is a strong focus on the health of…
After two successful Cape Town-based pop ups (and many requests for a Johannesburg-based one), THEM or The Ethical Market will open on Thursday evening at the Bamboo centre in Johannesburg. This pop up shop focusses on local and ethical fashion, accessories and homeware brands. (See…
Is your beauty shelf heaving with products, some unopened, others opened, not empty but unused? Are you a victim of the promise of eternal youth and flawless skin that comes in expensively packaged pots and jars? Yip, well most of us are. Whether they provide…
As the academic year draws to a close, fashion design students have been busy finalising their end-of-year collections. For her fourth-year project, Erin Hooper not only considered the environment but also the collapse of the Cape Town clothing and textile industry. When developing her final thesis for…
‘What’s the Stitch?’ is a new monthly column by Emma Jones-Phillipson about dressing sustainably in our modern age. She’ll pair critical insights into the environmental and social impacts of the fashion industry with useful guides to conscious buying, wearing, and mending clothes. Don’t fret about…
You know how the promise of summer feels: days are a little longer, the temperature slowly gets warmer, once every few days we have a teasingly perfect day followed by a colder one…It’s not long now before we can spend summer days on a beach…
https://youtu.be/vlkVfXIBPaU At a star-studded fashion event in Milan on Sunday night, the latest sustainable trends and innovation in fashion were on show at their luxurious best. Gowns, dresses and suits made from handwoven palm straw, recycled polyester, organic silk, upcycled denim... were gloriously worn…
The 2018 winner of the best film in the fashion category of Bokeh Fashion Film Awards is Picha Marangi. This two-minute long film starts with seconds of smoky, depressing landfill imagery, but quickly segues into a film that leaves you feeling like you’ve been listening…
With a passion for the natural environment and a fascination with the secret language we all speak through our clothes, Hanri Taljaard is currently knee-deep in a PhD study, focusing on “voluntary simplistic” clothing consumption practices in South Africa. Nadia Krige asked Hanri a few questions:…
On the first day of New York Fashion Week, slow fashion had its moment in Hong Kong. Last Thursday 11 emerging sustainable designers from around the world showed their collections at the Grand Final of the Redress Design Award 2018, the world’s largest sustainable fashion…