It’s just another day for Mervyn Dowman, carrying a leather bag he made with his own hands, with a laptop inside, to show potential clients his work.
”I’m not very shy; I just let my work speak for me.”
Those are the words of Cape Town-born Dowman, a mosaic artist from the day he discovered magic in his hands.
The long-haired, green-eyed Dowman, who speaks fast and soft, strangling his syllables, walks me through the streets of Maboneng lighting one cigarette after another.
Maboneng is the art precinct east of the Johannesburg city centre. It’s far from where Dowman learned to use his hands.
As a young boy, he had to rake the double plot they lived in with his grandparents for pocket money; he also had to make compost from chicken manure. Dowman knew too well the idea of working for money.
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He got his first casual job at the age of 13 as a packer at a Shoprite supermarket on weekends.
In his teenage years, Dowman met new friends who had a messy, but arty room with fishing nets and footprints going up to the ceiling. It awakened the artist in him.
Dowman moved around the Western Cape province as a boy and often went camping with friends. His childhood wasn’t rough but he didn’t finish high school because he got bored, he says.
“Then I applied for three kinds of apprenticeships; I [spent] a year at home and my friend’s brother was telling me it’s time to get out,” he says.
He got a plumbing apprenticeship for five years; at the end of the first year, his boss told him he was ready. He was given a box of tools and felt like a pro. Fixing roof leaks was his speciality.
Dowman loved the neatness of the plumbing trade but was determined to become a teenage entrepreneur.
”I was bored of plumbing, I’ve done it, I know it. And I had a love for leather work. At 14, I had made my first girlfriend a purse,” he says.
His aunt’s father-in-law was a shoemaker; he showed him how to make a purse and Dowman went on to make boots for hippies. It was very fashionable at the time, he says.
“Then I asked the girls at school for old earring studs, I used that to make patterns on the leather.”
Between the apprenticeship and entrepreneurship, Dowman received back pay from his first year worth R109 ($7.50) and bought tools to make belts and purses and sold them to neighbors.
Colleagues started ordering belts and purses for their wives and daughters as well.
At the age of 21, he resigned. He left plumbing and moved to Johannesburg. He had a stand at the Market Theatre Flea Market – the first of its kind in Johannesburg – selling tripod leather stools, bags and belts.
He made a tidy profit; selling about 10 stools a week. Out of one skin he’d make eight stools; the skin cost him about R100 ($7) and he sold each stool for around R30 ($2), he says.
“When you make something, you must make it like a jewel, put effort into it, because we can see, people are not stupid, we can see that effort is put into that.”
He made enough money to move into a commune, that’s where he made new friends who were set builders in the movie industry. Dowman thought he could try his hand at this and got a job backstage making props, like life-size dinosaurs made of fibreglass.
He moved back to Cape Town where films are a big thing. He was so good that he started doing sets for adverts in the United States.
“We took a 1976 Cadillac and cut it up, stretched it, put a pool in it; it was like a fantasy drive with kids in bikinis,” he says.
Dowman was a specialist in the set building industry and made good money. One morning, he decided to drop everything, move back to Johannesburg and try something different.
“One day, I switched on the TV with the intention to watch sport and up comes this doccie, in Italian, with subtitles saying ‘a large family still doing mosaics’. Like a eureka, a boom, a lightbulb in my head, this is my new job,” he laughs.
He found a contact and experimented making mirror frames from mosaics. With a friend he started a mosaic company in a factory in Bezuidenhout Valley, near the center of Johannesburg.
They had enough money to employ 30 people, whom Dowman trained. He believes this company changed the lives of the people they employed, out of the 30, 17 were women focusing on mosaics while the men made tables and chairs from metal.
The company went to Decorex, a lifestyle, design and décor viewing event, where they won an award for the best stand in 2001.
The company was doing well but clients didn’t want to go to Bezuidenhout Valley because it was seen as a crime-ridden area. The business moved to Newtown and that’s when he left the company.
“I was a partner but nothing was signed on the bottom line. Verbal things never really work,” he says.
Dowman soldiered on with mosaics.
He worked from his garage flat with four youngsters who learned the trade. They later moved to a bigger space in Houghton. By then, Dowman was known as the ‘Mosaic Guy’ in Johannesburg; his name was on everyone’s lip.
Today, Dowman is a solo artist with numerous works around the Maboneng Precinct, among other areas in South Africa. He works from a studio not far from Hartbeespoort Dam in the North West province.
His company is called Just Mosaic. The magic in his hands means his work is seen in clubs, bars, offices and graves.
He is an ever-growing solo artist with no debts, willing to explore anything that he can turn his magic hands to.

The Mosaic Man  With Magic  In His Hands

As Cape Town basked in the glory of being named the World Design Capital 2014, the words ‘design, creativity and innovation’ rang loud at this year’s Design Indaba held in the popular Western Cape city. The annual conference focused on how these elements can positively impact the world.
<div id="attachment_6172" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6172" class="size-medium wp-image-6172" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-060-063-FSH-Design-ind-001-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Shweta Wahi</div>
It was an early March weekend of fun and discovery for the creatives, artists, designers, hipsters – and ordinary folks – who made their way to the Cape Town International Conference Centre (CTICC). There were 500 exhibitors, from Mikhela Hawker, who makes lampshades from recycled plastic bottles to others, such as Galago, which designs and tailor-makes leather sandals on the spot, in less than 15 minutes.
Part of the event was a three-day conference on creativity, which included talks by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, creative minds and trendsetters, such as computer scientist Juliana Rotich from non-profit tech company Ushahidi, Ivorian architect Issa Diabaté, and South African photographer David Goldblatt. Tickets sold out quickly and for those who could not attend, the conference was simultaneously broadcast across four South African cities.
<div id="attachment_6160" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6160" class="size-medium wp-image-6160" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-060-063-FSH-Design-ind-007-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Kathrin Kidger</div>
The Design Indaba is a platform for exhibitors to showcase their products to consumers and industry buyers. Hearing the story behind the conceptualization, design and creation of a product directly from the people who make them, also helps drive sales.
One designer present at the event was Susan Slee, the owner of Maneki and creator of Mannetjie van Staal – meaning ‘little men of steel’ in Afrikaans. This former goldsmith and jewelry designer displayed an ethnic and animal-themed range of cutlery. Her fascination with the simplicity and quirkiness of children’s drawings led to the creation of the van Staal family. Her stainless steel cutlery range features six characters, each with a name and story. The range has since expanded to wood, carved by Zimbabwean artist Nathan Kenias.
<div id="attachment_6167" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6167" class="size-medium wp-image-6167" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-060-063-FSH-Design-ind-014-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Kathrin Kidger</div>
Yet another participant was Palesa Litha, an emerging designer who studied music before moving on to jewelry design. Her 2014 range, manufactured at an incubator in Rustenburg in the North West province of South Africa, explores the parallels between music and design.
The showcased designers were required to have at least two years’ experience in retail and had to have attended various workshops throughout the year, encompassing everything from costing and retail management to media training. Ten of these designers will now  go on to be a part of the South African collective at international trade fairs in in 2014 and 2015.
The Cape Town Fashion Council (CTFC) booked a R1-million ($93,722) space – the largest at the expo – to showcase 40 emerging and established designers. The CTFC develops entrepreneurship among designers and wants to shift fashion away from being about aesthetics towards embracing a sustainable business model.
<div id="attachment_6170" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6170" class="size-medium wp-image-6170" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-060-063-FSH-Design-ind-018-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Shweta Wahi</div>
Bryan Ramkilawan, Chief Executive Officer of the CTFC, is working on partnerships across Africa and wants to share intellectual property to get the local and African design industry to where it should be.
South African consumers are starting to pay more attention to local rather than international designs, says Ramkilawan. Three days of sales at the pop-up stores totaled R1.1 million ($103,116), this excluded buyer sales estimated at R2.5 million ($234,327). All the money from the sales went to the designers.
Whether it is fashion, décor, music or art, be sure to head to this year’s World Design Capital. In the words of Ramkilawan, “design is a way of life”.
What design means to them
<h6>Shweta Wahi,</h6>
<h6>Fashion Designer</h6>
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“Design to me, is all about exploring the creative tidbits from my childhood, what&#8217;s in front of me right now, the colors I see, the people I meet, the way a piece of fabric falls on the body, the way it feels &#8211; it’s a matter of perfecting how it feels and looks to express myself and tell my story.”
<h6>David Tlale, Fashion Designer</h6>
<div id="attachment_6164" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6164" class="size-medium wp-image-6164" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-060-063-FSH-Design-ind-011-300x214.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="214" />Fashion designer David Tlale at his Sandton store; Johannesburg, 1 November 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
“Design means innovation, it means evolving, it means moving forward, it means how you reinterpret what has already been done.”
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<h6>Jeanne van den Heever, Product Designer</h6>
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“It means coming up with something creative, especially if you can add function to that in styling.”
<h6>Palesa Litha, Designer</h6>
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“It is a different way of thinking. It’s science, it’s philosophy and it’s a way of living.”
<h6>Weaving Cultures</h6>
<h6>Elbé Coetsee brought rural appeal to urban folk at the Design Indaba</h6>
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In the late eighties, Elbé Coetsee and her husband moved to a game farm in rural Limpopo, South Africa. Based 15 kilometers from Botswana and 18 kilometers from Zimbabwe, Coetsee often encountered women who were looking for work even as their husbands toiled away on the roads and farms. Coetsee took up the role of mentor, teaching the women to weave, embroider, bead, make candles and paint. This provided a great platform to exchange cultures.
“It’s a wonderful experience to be able to learn from them and share some of my culture with them. I really think it’s about bridging gaps and having an understanding for another’s culture.”
Soon the orders came rolling in. In 1994, Coetsee registered the company under Mogalakwena Craft Art Development Foundation, named after one of the main rivers in Limpopo; Mogalakwena, meaning fierce crocodile.
Twenty years on, the company has grown to 20 employees who handcraft dainty table linen, placemats, table cloths, serviettes and scatter cushions, distributed and sold throughout South Africa. Although living rural comes with its challenges, such as being in remote areas away from the trappings of the city, not to mention traveling on dust roads, Coetsee says being surrounded and inspired by nature brings her a joy she cannot describe. Coetsee says the Design Indaba allowed her to showcase her work to an audience that would otherwise not have been able to see it. “It was our most successful Design Indaba,” she says.
<h6>Micro-mini</h6>
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The Design Indaba also got to the heart of objects, and how. The ‘color one’ installation for Mini, by Scholten &amp; Baijings from Amsterdam, dissected the design and composition of a Mini One car. The car manufacturer also displayed the Mini Connected system’s Dynamic Music function, a feature that adjusts the rhythm of music according to the drivers&#8217; driving style. The faster one drives, the louder the music. Attendees at the event could create their own remixes on the Mini dance floor, which was equipped with motion sensors.
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Africa By Design

If you’ve been living under a rock be sure to emerge and catch up because Africa is in vogue.
As far back as 2009, the world’s top designers couldn’t help making inspired references to what was once called the Dark Continent. The likes of Marc Jacobs and John Galliano have paid homage to Africa’s intricate beauty. Well renowned international designer Vivienne Westwood, exhibited her interest in Africa through her Ethical Fashion Africa Collection. Other Labels bitten by the Africa bug have been Burberry, Gwen Stefani’s LAMB and Tommy Hilfiger.
Arise Magazine’s African Icons show at last month’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week New York featured designs by Gavin Rajah, Ozwald Boateng, Folake Folarin (Tiffany Amber), Tsemaye Binitie and Amaka Osakwe (Maki Oh).
At the Arise Magazine Fashion Week in Lagos, Boateng was handed the Lifetime Achievement award and labels KLuK CGDT and Maki Oh won best designer.
It’s gone beyond Africans inspiring international designers, to African designers sharing their own history and creativity.
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Nigerian Designer, Lisa Folawiyo, studied law at the University of Nigeria and followed her dream when she started Jewel by Lisa from home in 2005. She redefined the way one could wear Ankara—a colorful wax resist dyed fabric—and makes handcrafted clothes that take an average of 120 hours, using custom made prints.
Nigerian fashion is moving away from the local markets with their rows of fabric stalls and corner tailors.
Folawiyo has exhibited in Johannesburg, London, Paris and New York. To increase her appeal and market, Folawiyo launched a diffusion line, The J Label, in 2011. The pieces emulate the luxury core of her designs but are a more practical and accessible option. The new label offers anything from trousers and handbags to dresses. While the main label ranges from $350-$11,500, the diffusion line ranges from $150-$350.
In South Africa, and further afield, the name Gavin Rajah is synonymous with style, opulence and glamor. He is a true example of an African designer turned international sensation. Rajah’s fashion is inspiring, his shows are mesmerizing and it’s no wonder he’s dressed people like Beyonce, Nelson Mandela, Tom Cruise, Naomi Campbell among others. As if this were not enough, Rajah has even delved into jewelry design.
Taking fashion beyond just designs, Rajah wrote a paper titled “Creating an Identity in Design: South Africa the future of fashion?”, which reached as far as Milan. A founder of the Cape Town Fashion Week, Rajah, is serious about the industry and its sustainability in the country. He’s made a point of employing and mentoring young designers in his Cape Town studio and sits on the Cape Town Fashion Council board.
From UNICEF Ambassador to design extraordinaire, Rajah sees no limit for his brand.
The most stylish first lady of the United States, since Jackie Kennedy Onassis, is a big fan of Nigerian Duro Olowu. Michelle Obama has worn the designer’s garments on many occasions. Quitting law was the best thing Olowu could have done for the fashion world. The courtroom’s loss has evidently been the runway’s gain. Olowu’s love for art goes beyond fashion and makes for interesting collections; all that creativity makes it hard to imagine him wanting to succeed in any profession but this one. His career was catapulted when he won the New Designer of the Year award at the 2005 British Fashion Awards. Now his clothes can be found online and in stores in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
“My job is not about dictating to women what they should wear, it’s about presenting them with beautiful options,” Olowu once told The Independent in London.
Deola Sagoe is a talented and beautiful mother of three, whose clothes have been modeled by supermodels Naomi Campbell and Alek Wek. Her daughters have fashion in their blood as they have launched their own fashion label CLAN. Sagoe went to college in the United States and has a Master’s in finance and management. She will showcase her new range at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Africa being held in Johannesburg at the end of this month.
Describing the Deola Sagoe woman, the designer says: “She is colorful—she uses color to mirror her mood. She is vital—energetic—not the shy, retiring, type, but she also knows the appropriate time to hold her peace.”
The final feather on the African cap is Tiffany Amber’s Folake Folarin-Coker, another Nigerian who did not study fashion and escaped the legal world. Folarin-Coker has a degree in Petroleum law and spent her childhood in Europe. The label launched in 1998 but she made history when she became the first African-based designer to showcase at New York Fashion Week for two consecutive seasons, in 2008 and 2009.
Tiffany Amber has an online shop as well as three stores in Lagos. The brand had grown by adding two more lines and winning Arise Magazine’s Fashion Brand of the Year award for the Autumn/Winter 2011 collection.
With designers such as these, it’s no surprise African designers are taking the industry by storm and inspiring plenty. This is just the beginning as there are many budding designers.
Nina Baksmaty’s Koshie O label is gorgeous. The Ghanaian designer established a workshop in Ghana and her work has attracted the likes of Franca Sozzanni and Roberto Cavalli on their visit to West Africa. She has also brought in American singers Mỳa and Michele Williams for one of her campaigns.
Osakwe’s Maki Oh line is definitely on the right track. Her age has not hindered her will to take on the world fashion. Although she grew up in London, the Nigerian designer returned to her country of birth to start her fashion line. Her inclusion in the New York Fashion Week will only solidify her place as a young designer to watch. She brings her age and fun to her designs and shows that sometime the “now generation” is a little old school. Osakwe uses adire, which is a process of indigo dying cloth using natural indigo leaves as opposed to industrial dye. This is commonly done by Yoruba women in southwestern Nigeria. She says it takes a day to hand paint five meters of fabric and another day to dye and de-wax it.
Osakwe says her latest collection is inspired by secrets and people’s inability to keep them. This imagery is brought forward by the eyes in her prints.
Loza Maléombho is Arise Magazine Fashion Week’s Emerging Designer of the Year. She designs in the United States and manufactures the clothes at her workshop in Côte d’Ivoire. This talented designer’s work can be traced as far back as her early teens, when she made dresses for the women in her family. Her Afro-Modern designs make use of batik prints, wax fabrics and Kente cloth. She’s all about showing the world what she has to offer and helping out the Côte d’Ivorian woman in the process.
The other fresh talent to keep an eye out for is Mimi Plange. Her Boudoir D’Huitres label has been around since 2007. Fashion guru André Leon Talley took an interest in and mentored her for her New York fashion Week presentation. As if this was not enough of a fashion nod, she created a capsule shoe collection with Manolo Blahnik—a dream for any woman in the world.
Africa is bringing more than just oil, gold and war to the table. The future of fashion is here.

Africa In Vogue

As Precious Moloi-Motsepe walks into the restaurant at the plush Michelangelo Towers, in the affluent northern suburbs of Johannesburg, she smiles sweetly while making her way to the table. The waiters are on their marks, but she signals kindly with her eyes that she’s fine—a down-to-earth lady in a peach power suit.
<div id="attachment_283" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-283" class="size-medium wp-image-283" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_1557-1-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Dr Precious Moloi &#8211; Motsepe, chairperson of the African Fashion Week held in Sandton</div>
She chuckles as she says many people ask how she switched from medicine to fashion. A doctor specializing in women’s health, she left her practice to chair a company organizing fashion week shows.
It is merely one leg of a long journey. One of five children, Moloi-Motsepe was born and raised in Soweto, south of Johannesburg; she went to a Catholic school in Rustenburg before studying medicine at Wits University in Johannesburg. This was followed by postgraduate studies in human and reproductive health at the University of Stellenbosch, near Cape Town.
The switch to fashion came after she stopped working to have a baby.  At the same time, her family foundation was being established, which contributes largely to education, health and economic opportunities for young people. The foundation was offered a fashion company in Cape Town and Moloi-Motsepe says she soon realised an opportunity was presenting itself in the clothing and textile business—an industry that employs many women.
As Moloi-Motsepe had worked in women’s health, this was another opportunity to help women help themselves economically. This heralded the birth of Africa Fashion International (AFI).
“I covered a lot; seeing fashion weeks and the impact they have on the economy of countries. You have media traveling from all over the world going there, you have buyers moving from all over the world to go there—you know it just stimulates growth,” Moloi-Motsepe says.
Africa Fashion Week, held at the Sandton Convention Centre from October 20 to 22 this year, proved to be the biggest yet with more than 20,000 visitors attending the event, as well as the Africa Fashion Trade Expo.
“Fashion in Africa is going places; we have an advantage of a growing population—a billion people on the continent. That’s a big number. The important thing is it should be consumers who are able to buy,” says Moloi-Motsepe.
The good doctor believes there is potential, but admits there are problems along the way, like a shortage of capital, an abundance of cheap imports and poor distribution.
“Cheap imports make it difficult for local designers to compete in the market because our input costs are very high compared to China,” she says.
“I think the best way for us is not to get stuck in competing at that level. Our focus should be on the high design, high quality, high value-added products—I think that will help to maintain sustainability of our industry.”
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Tea with the Queen of Fashion

Not so long ago, fashion design in Africa went something like this: A tailor sets up shop in the back room of his house; he services the needs of the community’s elite; in between making wedding dresses for local girls and three-piece matric dance suits for the boys, he’s known as the go-to person should your hemline need a bit of adjustment.
Ten years ago, this was fashion designer David Tlale’s reality as he sat alone by the sewing machine in his mother’s house in the township of Vosloorus, in the East Rand of Johannesburg, South Africa, drawing sketches and making patterns. Nowadays, it is these designs that have helped change the face of fashion in South Africa and the continent.
<div id="attachment_280" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-280" class="size-medium wp-image-280" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/299-35_01_1-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Fashion designer David Tlale at his Sandton store; Johannesburg, 1 November 2011 &#8211; Photo by Brett Eloff.</div>
As Tlale and I sit in the lounge of the upmarket Fire &amp; Ice! hotel in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, for sundowners, it is crystal clear that his vision is far from being a mere pipedream. In the nine years that he has been a professional fashion designer, he has won many awards and accolades; he has become arguably the most famous and recognizable black designer in South Africa with a list of endorsements.
And on the topic of endorsement, his current collaboration with the South African Mint is the talk of the town, owing to reports that the Mint stopped producing money on the day they hosted his fashion show at their Centurion premises during the recent Africa Fashion Week, in October.
So how did he get the money-making machine to come on board with him?
“SA Mint got in contact with me after they attended the fashion show that I held on the Mandela Bridge in May 2011 (the bridge was also closed for this show). They had been supporting a few campaigns on climate change—the awareness and fundraising for it, so they wanted me to bring a fashion element, like an artistic interpretation of the dangers and effects of climate change,” he says.
The Mint had a special coin, worth more than $1,000, struck in his honour for his contribution to the cause.
The Mint was not the only customer. Luxury car manufacturer Volvo also selected Tlale as one of three South African designers—along with Nkhensani Nkosi of Stoned Cherrie and Gert-Johan Coetzee—to help design its cars.
But his biggest coup so far has been Estée Lauder’s Clinique range, for which he designed a limited edition handbag. This resulted in David Tlale branding being splashed across malls and department stores all over South Africa and beyond.
In September 2011, Tlale took a major plunge by opening a store at the high-end Michelangelo Towers in Africa’s economic hub—the mall of Sandton City. Now, at a time of recession when other established designers are selling into major parent companies, mainly for security, this move has raised the proverbial eyebrow among many a fashion and retail expert.
“Three years ago, Woolworths came to me and offered to take my brand on to distribute through their stores. Now after working for so many years to make sure that consumers understood my identity and aesthetic, I decided to decline this offer because I felt that they wanted to wash away much of the detail that makes a David Tlale creation. They wanted to dilute my signature basically, so I decided to wait it out until I felt that my brand was ready to stand on its own two feet in the world of retail,” he says confidently.
Tlale is also known to be open and honest about having faced extreme highs and lows in his journey to becoming a fashion businessman.
“I have seen it all,” he says. “I have gone through times where the business overheads were way more than what was coming in; I have even gone through a time when I thought I needed to get a nine-to-five job to finance the costs of running the label. But that was part of the journey that every entrepreneur goes through.
“People criticize and slate me for choosing the Michelangelo Towers to house the store, but I personally believe that the brand David Tlale calls for an address like that and nothing else. We are a luxury brand and we have to be where all the other luxury brands are, and where the tourists and the moneyed set hang out. And the label is ready,” he adds.
While it remains to be seen just how well the store at the Towers does, over at The Bromwell boutique hotel in Cape Town, where Tlale’s wares are also sold, things appear to be going swimmingly.
“I was so amazed by how well our merchandise is moving at The Bromwell. At this point, customers are calling for us to open a David Tlale branch over in Cape Town, so what I am working on right now—while I watch the progress at my Johannesburg store—is to expand within The Bromwell,” he states.
With prices at the store ranging from anything between R1,200 ($150) for a blouse to R8,000 ($1,000) for an evening dress, how does Tlale handle the general perception that one has to pay a fortune to afford a David Tlale piece, and does that hurt his business in any way?
“I get a lot of that kind of reaction. People generally think that it takes a right arm, a leg and a kidney to afford one of my garments, and that’s not necessarily true,” he says.
Tlale’s deep-pocketed clientele pay more than R25,000 ($3,150) for a custom-made couture piece.
I ask whether Tlale has male clients who allow him to put them in dresses, like he does the male models who walk the ramp for his fashion shows.
“My inspiration for putting men in dresses stems from the eastern culture that I totally embrace. And as a point of correction, those garments people see as ‘dresses’ are actually long kaftans. As an artist, I love pushing the boundaries and reminding people that fashion is art, it’s fantasy, and I do not believe in doing a show that will not give people something to talk about when they leave. I use my shows to tell a story, to give people an experience and to give the media something to chew on,” he says.
As one of the most publicized fashion designers in Africa, it would seem that the media and the press appear mesmerized by Tlale. The reports aren’t always rosy; there is talk of tardiness and “diva tendencies”.
“The problem here is that I am always the last designer to close off a season of Fashion Week. And what normally happens is that everyone before me is already running late, so by the time I’m supposed to come on and wrap things up, it’s glaringly obvious that everything is running two hours late and I get the flak for all of it,” he explains.
Whether or not you subscribe to Tlale’s over-the-top bling aesthetic and price tag, there’s no denying that he has indeed come a long way from the dusty streets of “Voslo”, and is inching closer to realising his dream of changing the face of fashion in Africa.
The David Tlale label is making waves at the respective fashion weeks in Angola, Nigeria, Ghana and Mozambique—the rest of the continent awaits to be conquered.
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Tag: Patterns

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