What comes to mind when you think of fashion in apartheid South Africa? Is it young Nelson Mandela opening the Rivonia Trial wearing traditional Xhosa regalia? Or the fit and flare skirts and three-piece suits worn when dancing to the music of Sophiatown as represented in Drum magazine? Perhaps it’s images of gum boots and overalls in cramped, dark Johannesburg and Kimberley mines?
Do you even think of fashion in an era of so much socio-political strife and turmoil?
Socio-political issues come up frequently in contemporary post-Apartheid South African fashion. Early democracy designers, like Stoned Cherrie, Loxion Kulca and Sun Goddess, focused on reclamation with something to prove to a world that didn’t see African fashion as couture—re-contextualising so-called traditional prints like shweshwe, emblazoning shirts with icons like the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement Steve Biko, and celebrating homegrown movements like Kwaito and Sophiatown.
Still from Back of the Moon, a film about Sophiatown, starring Lemogang Tsipa as Ghost, S’Dumo Mtshali as Strike and Thomas Gumede as Nat. Image supplied
Later, designers like David Tlale and Thula Sindi reflected the upward mobility and economic freedoms of the new and growing Black middle class – or Black Diamonds, who had moved beyond the ‘native’ imagery of the Apartheid era—adapting Western trends for local tastes in sequins, lace and sweeping skirts.
Now, the likes of Lukhanyo Mdingi and MaXhosa explore older textile traditions, crafting narratives in the postcolonial, post-Apartheid collage of present-day South Africa.
Laduma Ngxokolo stands with models after a Maxhosa show for Confections x Collections 2022. Image: Andile Phewa
There’s always been a tension with the typically African in our fashion.
Shweshwe prints, for example, were the result of colonialism (an Indonesian cotton printing technique brought to our shores by the Dutch and Germans) and were most frequently used in the 20th century for domestic worker uniforms. The visual language and symbolism of the beadwork unique to and shared by many different Southern African tribes was commodified and stratified for tourists and Westerners looking to exoticise their dress. The sheepskins that once made up the signature of the Basotho people were replaced by British-produced wools that are now seen as the official, traditional dress. From umbhaco to minceka, many of our textile traditions have had some interaction with colonialism and Apartheid—whether a result of or in opposition to.
If we were to organise these different eras—Apartheid, early democracy and the present—there are some distinct ideas.
We could see fashion in Apartheid as a struggle between respectability (think of the tailored suiting of the African National Congress) and rebellion (Mandela’s Xhosa attire in court). Just as with the American Civil Rights Movement, it was important for Black people at this time to defy the racist notions of primitiveness in order to be heard. And while there was the presence of uniquely domestic takes on music, theatre and film; it was often presented with the same dress you’d find in the West.
The early democracy era placed a great emphasis on the Rainbow Nation; a singular South African culture unified through entertainment and sport: flag-printed tracksuits, a white Miss South Africa in an isicholo, shweshwe codified as the tartan of the nation. At the same time, our country was newly part of a greater global context, and striving to be a player in that world; influenced by American media and European design made possible through Chinese imports.
Now in the present, designers look to the past more than they look to a bright, new future. We have collaborative craft and design initiatives like The Herd Designs, utilising beadwork to explore architecture, language and design culture outside of Apartheid definitions. For example, the creation of the official language groups has made a monolith of Xhosa or Ndebele-speaking people, a people of different tribes and clans with their own unique takes on craft. MaXhosa and Rich Mnisi have made the so-called traditional cool – it’s not been uncommon to see the everyday South African fashioned in the patterns, prints and silhouettes of cultural dress mostly relegated to Heritage Day or ceremonies and rites like weddings and initiations. Thabo Maketha makes the Basotho blanket her canvas, imbuing her own contemporary perspectives which raises the question of what gets to be considered traditional and what is modern.
Thabo Maketha. Image supplied
Are these textiles, from shweshwe to knitted merino woollens, wholly representative of their colonial origins or are they products of our own through the ways in which we’ve adapted them? Do we lose an essence of our cultures when we dare to reimagine them? Or is it the very idea that our cultures and identities are stagnant, frozen in time, that we continually fight against when determining ourselves in this era?
- Feature image of MaXhosa show for Confections x Collections 2022 taken by Andile Phewa
