A red carpet was rolled out, though this time not for celebs to strut and pout in front of the cameras but for a handful of fashionable types to board one of the world’s most luxurious trains, all in the name of wearing local.
It was about brunch time on Friday when we found ourselves gathered on a platform at Bosman Station in Pretoria, to take a ramble on the Blue Train to meet the nine judges who make up this year’s Proudly SA Local Fashion Police. They are tasked with issuing “a warrant of arrest for everyone who has not been found wearing local”, in a drive to support home-grown threads.
“This is a simple, relatable show-and-tell to highlight the importance of the South African fashion industry — from the work of David Tlale to the seamstress down the road,” explained Proudly SA’s exuberant chief marketing officer, Happy MaKhumalo Ngidi, who came up with the concept five years ago.
Among the invitees was one of the campaign’s original judges, Ouma Tema, whose brand Plus Fab caters for plus-sized women looking for options to dress stylishly, and TikToker Sipho “Alphi” Mkhwanazi, who was draped in a Boys of Soweto shawl.
Up come two of this year’s judges, Nobukhosi “Khosi” Nkosi and her husband Thabo Mukwevho, who are behind womenswear brand Khosi Nkosi, known for its modern take on traditional wear.
Khosi, younger sister to Themba Nkosi (the DJ and music producer, better known as Euphonik), stuns in a floor-length Ankara print dress with dramatic sleeves and a plunging neckline.
On the wood-panelled train, past rows of sleeping cars peppered with fashion displays, I come across the rest of the judges, seated in the train’s club car, which features a bar and loungers where travellers might go to sip whisky and enjoy an after-dinner cigar.
They include the chic Londeka Ndaba of Pretoria-based womenswear label Malondié, Cape Town designer Stephen van Eeden, Tshepo Mohlala of Tshepo Jeans fame and one of the new kids on the fashion block, Thandazani Nofingxana of ABANTU in Africa.
What can we expect from their judging? “A lot of spice,” said Stephen.
Meanwhile, Tshepo says he is hoping to see “a lot of creativity. Boldness. People thinking out of the box” when it comes to participants in the competition, run on social media, which will see four winners score R50,000 of local designs.
While our Blue Train excursion wasn’t the picturesque 54-hour route from Pretoria to Cape Town, but rather a few hours meandering outside the Jacaranda City, guests did have a chance to savour the renowned white-glove dining service.
Our meal started with a seafood parcel with fennel and bean sprouts salad and a spicy butternut soup; followed by a choice of pan-seared salmon or veal fillet coated with biltong mains; followed by desserts, which included sticky toffee pudding and lemon meringue topped with granadilla mousse and strawberries.
From clothing — which, due to the rise of fast fashion driven by retailers such as Zara and H&M (and even cheaper online alternatives such as Temu and Shein), has become a big contributor to landfill waste — to the artistic repurposing of used coffee capsules after your morning espresso.
Pam Friedman has taken more than 30,000 discarded aluminium coffee capsules and transformed then into a body of eight evocative works that celebrate women “from the sacred pages of Jewish tradition”, along with two South African historical figures, under the theme, Matriarchs.
The exhibition was launched at the Candice Berman Gallery in Rosebank, Johannesburg, on Thursday evening and drew a crowd of art aficionados, coffee connoisseurs and influencers, including lifestyle content creator Anazarde Omar and Dr Karishma Ramdev, an aesthetic medical doctor and former Miss SA finalist, who came along with husband, advocate John Mouton.
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