In a guest column, author Tandekile Mkize explores how community, culture, and the sense of belonging are transforming the future of South African fashion, arguing that the concept of Ubuntu could become the next design code for the industry. The author notes that international fashion brands are increasingly creating spaces where fashion intersects with music, art, food, hospitality, and community, as people seek deeper and more meaningful ways of interaction.
Mkize recalls being invited to contribute to the G-Star sponsored series The Art of Style to examine the growing shift of fashion from mere products to experiences. This request proved timely, as the author himself is working on a new project that challenges him to create a people- and culture-centric retail experience for clothing.
Fashion as a Medium of Connection
The fashion industry has become highly eloquent in the language of connection. Concepts such as collaboration, belonging, creative ecosystems, and cultural exchange are discussed. There is a growing realization that consumers are looking for something more than just beautiful things; they are seeking places where they can gather and feel part of something larger.
The brand G-Star embraced this shift by positioning fashion as a tool for cultural exchange. The company uses collaborations with South African creatives to integrate the global denim brand into the local cultural context. Examples include a limited collection with Cape Town artist Russel Abrahams, known as Yay Abe, and the Fuata Moyo (Re)Love exhibition. These events have catalyzed discussions, bringing together artists, designers, cultural figures, and fashion enthusiasts.
The author questions what it would look like if community became not just a campaign or a buzzword, but a design practice. He raises the question: what happens if we move beyond intentions and start designing based on the values we so easily proclaim? South African fashion must ask itself not how it talks about community, but how it designs it.
There is already an established language for understanding relationships and reciprocity—this is Ubuntu. Often reduced to a well-known proverb, Ubuntu is more useful when understood as a way of practice rather than merely a description of community. It prompts us to ask different questions about how fashion is produced and what relationships it allows to be established.
This global shift towards experimental fashion is becoming not just a trend report, but an opportunity to view the role of fashion in our social and cultural lives differently. South African fashion has a chance to offer its own model where community is intentionally designed and sustained.
Lessons from Local Initiatives
The author does not need to invent how this should look, as designers and creative workers across the country are already pointing in this direction. For instance, the Mamakashakain space in Braamfontein, while not exclusively a fashion venue, offers one of the most telling lessons for the industry. In the author's view, Mamakashaka founder Nandi Dlepu understands that culture is shaped through regular gatherings.
Various events can take place in this space: one week might feature a fashion show to introduce young designers, the next might host a lecture or discussion with cultural figures about self-identity or creative practice, and another might host a dance party. People return there because they trust that significant events can happen in the right setting.
Fashion needs to learn from such places. While not every brand needs to become a cultural hub, brands can more consciously create conditions for connection—places where discoveries happen naturally, and belonging develops over time, rather than being promised within an advertising campaign.
The collaboration between Thebe Magugu and Wanda Lephoto titled Everyday Resistance demonstrates another example of this practice. For the author, this is one of the most significant events in South African fashion in recent years. In an industry that often rewards a singular creative vision, Everyday Resistance offers a different approach: solidarity can be a creative force.
The collaboration shows that fashion is enriched when it embraces dialogue. Wanda Lephoto noted that this partnership means a great deal to her because she gets to work with Thebe, whom she loves, respects, and admires, and they are working toward freedom, which is very important to both of them.
If community is a design practice, then one manifestation of this can be how designers support each other. Everyday Resistance serves as a vivid example that solidarity among designers is not only possible but necessary, as meaningful cultural work is created not in isolation, but in interconnectedness.
Designer Onesimo Bam poses a completely different question: who has the right to the fashion experience? His works constantly blur the lines between fashion and everyday life, creating accessible and vibrant encounters. His pieces, from the streets of Langa and Bree Street to the majestic St George's Cathedral, argue that fashion does not lose its value when it leaves exclusive spaces; on the contrary, it gains cultural significance by becoming part of daily life, rather than an object of distant observation.
These examples differ in form and intent, yet they share a common instinct: to bring people together around shared values and cultural participation. They remind us that fashion is most meaningful when it creates conditions for people not just to consume culture, but to actively participate in its creation.
The author is interested in what will happen if we stop viewing these examples as isolated instances of good practice and start seeing them as signs of something bigger. What if designing community becomes more than just ethics adopted by individual designers or creative spaces? What if Ubuntu is adopted as one of the guiding principles for imagining the future of South African fashion?
Perhaps this is the next frontier—the formation of a fashion ecosystem intentionally designed around care and participation.
