How 2020 became SA designer Thebe Magugu’s best year ever
Photographs by Travys Owen
A son of the northern Cape winning the most prestigious prize in global fashion: the rise of south African fashion designer Thebe Magugu sounds like the plot of the feel-good movie of the decade. through his own words, we take A look At his incredible journey
On destiny
With me, I feel like I was always destined to do what I do. I’m not equipped to do anything else, literally. I can only do fashion; if I can’t, it’s a wrap for me. I remember when I enrolled in crèche or grade 1, we were told to sketch the first thing that came to mind. Mine was the only fashion sketch in the class. From that point on, my mom could tell that this was a serious and growing interest that I had at a very young age. My earliest gift that she gave me, which I will cherish and remember forever, was this massive black sketchpad; she encouraged me to draw in it every day. That encouragement made me want to do it even more.
On education
Having done created my own fashion magazine in high school, Little Black Book, and writing every day, I was really interested into the peripheral things around fashion, such as fashion media and fashion photography. I convinced LISOF [now Stadio Education] to let me study all three at the same time. It was three separate industries, essentially, but I love how they run into one another. That experience taught me to contextualise what I do – so that it’s not just a design, but I can imagine its placement in photography, or how it can be written about. At my graduate show, Woolworths asked I if I’d like to go and work for them. This was 2015. So I went to Cape Town, but I hated it. It was an incredible team, and I was working directly under David West – who is the most brilliant designer and I’m so grateful to have learned under him – and the team was amazing, but I think Cape Town in itself was something I didn’t quite mesh with, and working in a corporate environment was very difficult for me. I resigned, with absolutely nothing lined up, to the devastation of my mom – but there was something in me, that said I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m going to move back to Jo’burg, it’s going to be extremely stressful and tough. And it wasn’t easy. I lived in the CBD, I had cornflakes every single day, because I coulnd’t afford to eat anything. When I couldn’t’t afford to pay my rent, I had to sleep on friend’s couches. Rich [Mnisi] and his mom put me up for about six months, and I moved from friend’s house to friend’s house that way, because fashion back then wasn’t big enough to support me. So I struggled for a while.
On the big break
My saving grace was in 2017, when Woolworths came back to me in another capacity, to collaborate for the Stylebysa campaign. I was literally on my last legs, because I was considering going back home to Kimberly, to do what, I’m not sure, but it was my only “next step” left. David West reached out again and said, “Hey, we’re doing Stylebysa.” He saw my potential. He didn’t choose me because of what I’ve done in the past, which is the normal way I think people are approached for collaborations or opportunities, and not what your potential is. Of course, I agreed, and that’s when I did my first official collection in 2017, Geology, for SA Fashion Week, in conjunction with Woolworths.
And from there, I could afford to get a proper place of my own, and funnel resources, especially financial resources, into my business and my production.
On going global
But things were still quite on a plateau, even though I was doing Woolworths. My break internationally came through Vogue Talents [produced by Italian Vogue], through Sarah Maino, who had been looking at my Instagram. Vogue brought designers to Milan, and introduced them to really key people in the industry, at Palazzo Corsani in Milan. I did Milan, and then shortly after that I was contacted by Sarah Mower [of the British Fashion Council]. The two Sarahs have really been my saving grace. I’ve long respected Sarah Mower and she sort of brought me onto a called the International Fashion Showcase (IFS) where 16 designers from all over the world come together – a mentorship programme and competition. There, I learned things that I never would have learned at school, or at institutions in South Africa, or fashion councils. >>
It’s how to approach buyers, how do to your pricing, etc.
When I was in an incubator in South Africa, I was told I could never price things over R2 000 – otherwise I wouldn’t make it as a designer in general. And you latch onto that information because that’s all you know. That kind of thinking informs an entire industry. And this is information from the top. So I had to be completely recalibrated in how I think about fashion and pricing, through all of these experiences.
On validation
That culminated into the physical exhibition, and I won the overall curation prize of the International Fashion Showcase. And the day before, I was told by [fashion and lifestyle conglomerate] LVMH that I had made it into the top 30 – the semi-finals of their prize. I never would have thought that this would be my reality, especially from where I had started in Kimberly and the township. And I think you never really get over the insecurity of “not being from there.” But I wont the IFS, and then LVMH told me I had to be in Paris the next week, for the semi-finals. It was my first time in Paris and it is the most intimidating thing, because you’re completely outside what you know. All the finalists come with their teams, and here I am waddling in with a broken suitcase – and everyone is super serious and has been in the industry for a while, and no matter where they are in the trajectory of their businesses, they’re still from that system. So me I felt incredibly out of place. But you also have to put on a brave face and say “I didn’t come all this way to just come and gawk at other people.” We had to present to about 75 judges over two days, and on the first day, the first person to walk in was Anna Wintour. I was on a Whatsapp call with my mom, And then someone taps me on the shoulder, and when I turned around it was this person with massive sunglasses and a severe bob, with [LVMH executive vice president] Delphine Arnault to her right. So I had to say, “Mama, I’ll call you back!” Anna was incredibly sweet, and was just sharing information – her first husband is South African – and all kinds of interesting things. She stopped becoming this deity and became this physical person.
On impostor syndrome
I initially didn’t enter LVMH because I didn’t think I’d get in, but then I was encouraged to enter. When I got in, I thought, This is where I’m ending. On my flight back to SA, I thought, That was great, but it’s a wrap. A few weeks passed, and that was confirmation in my mind that I didn’t get in. And when I got a call – I sort of prepped myself to say, “Thank you for the opportunity”, and then LVMH was telling me, “Congratulations, I had made it in to the top six.”
When I went back to Paris for the final round, I forgot everything I was going to say. For two minutes I stared quite blankly at everyone. Claire Wright Keller encouraged me to start, so I gathered myself quickly, and I spoke about what my long-term visions are and what I want for the brand, and then my time was up. And I was so miserable actually as soon as I walked out of that door, because I thought, I just squandered my opportunity. I couldn’t remember what I said because it was all such a blur. And I became very, very upset, and the press conference was in the next hour. Everything happened quite quickly. And I was very miserable, and press started coming in– Suzy Menkes, Sarah Mower, all those industry people – and they gathered us all around. And Alicia Vikander then walked up on to the stage and said, “The winner of the LVMH prize is Thebe Magugu.” It was so surreal and it broke so many over-arching personal narratives that I had about myself, and it was incredibly validating. It was the highest validation. And it’s changed my life in ways I can’t possibly imagine. LVMH has been really incredible to me and I’ve been working quite hard to sustain all those things that they’ve given me. These past two years – because it’s two years out of that hectic period of suffering – have been unbelievable.
On collaborations
Woolworths as a collaborative effort helped me tremendously. I’m still a young designer, but I think I have a bit more of a stance and a name in that regard, so I can sort of make demands, I suppose. Now, with all of the projects that I’m going into, I always insist that I they have social responsibility component. I’m going into collaborations and business with big brands which can afford to do that, so that it’s not just product, and that there’s something happening here, locally. I have to really think about that. Having seen abject poverty, what HIV does to a community, you can’t help but not think, Okay, what more can I do? Product is fabulous, butwhat can be the peripheral project that runs with all of this, whether it’s skills development or hiring local people, or giving back in a lot of ways? I recently came back from Kimberly, on a trip to donate to schools that needed it the most. Things like that help me feel quite connected. That’s what I’m realising now that I’m working on my mental state – where I’m doing things that empower others, or help others out, is what gives me great joy, instead of the more fleeting, more surface things. Those are the things that make me feel quite connected in general. Collaborative efforts are really important. >>
On his latest collaboration with castle lite’s fashion arm, cld
There’s Thebe Magugu the brand, and then within the brand, there’s Extracurricular, which is the cool, younger sister to the brand. It carries more accessible and staple pieces. With me swinging between the global north and South Africa, I need to have things for people to buy into. Extracurricular was that solve for me – but not by making it cheap or run-of-the-mill, but rather a really fascinating , communal, youth-led brand. Castle Lite had a approached me about CLD, which is their fashion wing, which will collaborate with designers, season after season, and that our collaboration would be the first. I wanted it to be with Extracurricular because there are parallels between Extracurricular and what CLD wants to do, in terms of the community space they want to occupy, and catering to a variety of people. The collection itself is staples – the shirt, the sweatpants, the hoodie – but there’s a designer twist on those pieces that makes them fun to wear, and it gives you a lot of opportunities in terms of styling. That’s how it came to be. The doodles which appear on the clothing are inspired by my personal Instagram, [@thebetsilem], which is completely irreverent and essentially a meme page. I really don’t like taking photos of myself, but I couldn’t post myself with the phone I previously had. So I just stated doodling myself in these bizarre situations. There’s a doodle of me, Suzy Menkes and Naomi Campbell, or me with Jonathan Anderson from Loewe – because I didn’t like the image that came out, so my doolde became the replacement image. Someone had actually said that it would look fantastic on a shirt. I’d always kept that at the back of my head, and I recently came up with Extracurricular, which is the “afterschool activity” of Thebe Magugu – and that’s how the two merged.
On local industry challenges
I think we need a recalibration on what fashion and its price point is locally. You’re always seeing that subject trend on Twitter – this is too expensive, or that’s too expensive. People don’t understand the number of hands that these products have to pass through for it to be created. We’re not these conglomerates or massive retailers – our margins are much lower. These are designer products. And as designers, there’s more work at hand that goes into it. That’s on the consumer side. In terms of the industry in general, there’s an extreme lack of support for designers in our industry, whether that’s financial, or other resources. I don’t think we have institutions like the Council of Fashion Designers of America, or the British Fashion Council, that have massive fundraising efforts, or have places for designers to go for resources around planning, finances, and all of those things.
This is critical for the success of many designers. The gatekeepers in that capacity don’t have proper resources to be able to support young designers, and for the ones that I’ve met, it’s an insane amount of selfinterest to see how they can benefit. Things like that keep our industry quite infantile.
On challenges Of race and identity
I do find there is a problem that comes with being referred to as a
“black African designer”, and not just “a designer”. On one hand, it’s exactly who I am, and I use my culture and heritage and my blackness, to inform a lot of things that I do, but I know that word can come with so many unfair connotations. And it can be weaponised in a lot of ways.
When I was in Milan, a white designer who told me I only won the LVMH Prize because
I’m black. Things like that make you realize that “black designer” or “black African designer” sits below the word “designer”. Depending on who says it, it’s used in a way that nullifies the skill of the designer. Unfair things come with that term – it should just be designer. There are very serious issues around race in fashion, and one of the many problems is that white designers are judged on their potential, and black designers are judged on their CV – who they’ve dressed and their achievements. It takes an entire overhaul mentally to us to even start to address the issues around race in fashion. In SA, our issues are compounded. We have loadshedding, this, that – and then that’s compounded by racism. It’s difficult in a local context with those issues, but also to break through internationally, with the systemic racism that exists.
On what’s next
My next goal is really is happiness. I’ve experienced how severe fashion can be on the body, and mentally, so as a personal goal, I want to find a way to work in it without going into personal ruin. In our industry, working hours don’t exist, and it becomes our personal life. Happiness is my ultimate goal, not only for me, but for other people in the industry. I also really want to continue what I’m doing by making sure that I build an incredible brand that has a footprint al over the world, based here in South Africa, and doing what it can to support local, and contribute to our growing industry.