In South Africa, a Designer Making Personal Clothes With Political Messages

When the Johannesburg-based women’s wear designer Thebe Magugu, now 25, had nightmares as a child growing up in Kimberley, South Africa, his mother would tell him to record them in a journal. “I found them recently and thought to incorporate them in my work,” he says. He showed the results during his fall 2019 show in Johannesburg in October: a black mesh blouse, a full circle skirt spliced with white duchess satin printed with segments of text (one passage recounts a recurring dream involving dead horses). Transposing these disturbing dreams onto clothing was a statement, the designer says, about turning “times of suffering into a positive, beautiful thing” — in this case, elegant garments that reference unapologetically traditional feminine silhouettes. Magugu, who is a finalist for this year’s LVMH Prize, says that his mother not only inspired these pieces but that she has been a formative influence on his practice. “I’ve always been surrounded by women,” he says. “Independent, strong, headstrong women at that.”

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Magugu’s namesake brand, founded in 2016, engages with the complexities of womanhood in South Africa. Each collection is a gentle political statement; while his structural dresses and forward-looking tailoring are flattering and often feature nipped-in waists and elements of corsetry, there is also plenty of strangeness and asymmetry — think wonky hems, unexpected slits and garments that are half one thing, half another. Magugu is not afraid to explore the darkness under the surface. In Home Economics, his collection for fall 2018, for instance, he alluded to a series of highly publicized femicides that took place in South Africa in 2017 and 2018, including that of Karabo Mokoena, who was murdered by a former boyfriend in Johannesburg. The story was just one of many examples of “conditions that women find themselves in here,” says Magugu, explaining that misogynistic violence is still rife in his home country. In response, his designs subverted traditional female societal roles. He used colors that called to mind cleaning chemicals — sulfuric yellows, alkaline pinks and purples — but gave them new power by combining them with angular asymmetric tailoring and belted smocks with utilitarian work-wear references. The collection sang of the future pulling against the past; warrior women fortifying themselves to claim space and influence in a changing South Africa.