A family that sews together
Laduma Ngxokolo is wearing a snappy bucket hat. It is immediately recognisable as one of his signature knits and is embossed with a gold Maxhosa badge of honour.
As far as clever product placement goes, the hat is a perfect gesture. It’s giving street cred and luxury in equal measure, while generously reinforcing his brand values or, as his superfan and the world’s most respected senior fashion journalist Suzy Menkes said of his presentation during Paris Fashion Week, from which he has just returned, “all the colour and pattern of the African vision but with an international feel”.
Judging from her repeated postings celebrating Maxhosa on Instagram, this counts as high praise from the eminence grise who has literally seen it all.
We are chatting over steak sandwiches and soup for lunch at Zioux, which he chose because he has a deep-seated appreciation of the sensibility of the place. It makes me feel like I am in a contemporary reimagining of a members’ club somewhere in Africa circa 1930, but with more than a dash of mischief. And Laduma is the new-age equivalent of a Randlord — whose vision is going global.
Here is the thing about Laduma: he is very systematically and very seriously setting up a fashion empire one mill at time. He has just told me that Maxhosa, the brand he launched 11 years ago, owns a mill because, obviously, if you are going to own a knitwear company you should own the means of production.
I ask him if there was always a vision. “Of course, there was a dream board where Tom Ford was holding a whisky walking down a fashion ramp, there was the Missoni family, there was William Morris, there was the industrial aspirational side of it, you know, because I started with a domestic machine.”
That domestic machine is the heart of everything, and his entrepreneurial mother, who manufactured curios in Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, is the creative impetus.
“Our mother was the fashionable one in the family. In the ’80s she started doing bespoke knitwear pieces, then marriage got in the way. She stopped and sold the knitting machine, a brand called Pasat. She sold it and forgot about it until 2001. When I was 15 she came across this specific knitting machine again.
“When we went to look for a TV set, because we grew up in a house where she could not afford to buy a TV, everyone was very disappointed when she came home with the knitting machine because the plan was to buy a TV, because we were backward with the soapies and dramas.
“I became so enthusiastic with the machine. She helped me make my first-ever design. Unfortunately, she passed away later that year.”
But she had a vision of her own for the family. “She knew her illness would not take her any further, so she warned us that we must stick to school, take our careers seriously and make sure we worked together as a family. And that is what we did. We stayed
in a household, us kids, and we raised ourselves.
“I branched out into textiles. In high school I did a course called textile design and history of art, so already I was on this path. Then I studied at Nelson Mandela University and in the fourth year of my B Tech I came up with the idea for my thesis project, which later became the brand. As part of the curriculum we were supposed to take part in a global design competition, which I won.”
The rest is fashion history. The family still works together, running the business, establishing an African fashion dynasty. They now have more than 300 employees, which Laduma freely admits can be a full-time human resources operation. They are building the empire, best-selling golfer by best-selling golfer, on their own steam.
I ask about the Parisian element of their plan: “It gives you great credibility as a brand to showcase in Paris. We applied a few times and were rejected by the Paris Fashion Week jury. We were finally accepted for this latest season to do a presentation. We have not been accepted for a fashion show yet.
“So, as you know, we are opening a store in New York next month. Americans are so obsessed with French fashion, so our intention is to grow our partnership with Paris
Fashion Week so we can open great marketing channels to increase our market in America and in other parts of the world. But, ultimately, our aim is to constantly grow our standards and learn from other high-end brands that are showcasing.”
He explains: “This presentation was called My Conviction, which is me trying to
proclaim what I represent and what I aspire to achieve, my vision. So basically, My conviction is quite simple and straightforward. We want to add value to the African economy and the African fashion economy by creating jobs, by stretching our value chain and having a policy of keeping some form of our businesses within. And that was truly my intention since before I even came into the industry.”
And they are doing it in innovative ways. For example, they are hosting their second culture festival next weekend, a day-long affair which culminates in a fashion show.
“So when you filter down, you realise that you know what we are is a cultural brand, but not just any cultural brand. Our slogan is simple — we do ethnic culture. But ethnic culture reimagined. So we decided let’s make a cultural festival. We showcase music from different cultures from different parts of South Africa. Two of the most anticipated artists are Oskar Mbo — a deep house DJ — and traditional Zulu artist Sjava.
“The ultimate goal is to showcase hip-hop culture. Because we have a lot of hip-hop clients and a lot of amapiano clients, there’ll be amapiano artists performing — you want to showcase the multicultural aspects of the brand positioning.”
Americans are so obsessed with French fashion, so our intention is to grow our partnership with Paris Fashion Week so we can open great marketing channels in America