Bay designers rock at the Met
● It might be known for being the friendly and windy city, but I learnt about Port Elizabeth’s arty side on Thursday night at a fundraising dinner for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum.
The gallery was set up for a show featuring the creations of women designers of the Bay.
The museum’s director, Emma O’Brien, tells me the institution houses pieces by Irma Stern, Walter Battiss, PE-born George Pemba and art world darling Nicholas Hlobo. It is trying to update its collections but hasn’t had a budget since 2010.
The Friends of the Museum, whose first fundraiser last year raised R60,000, are helping.
The event was organised by the city’s well-known PR gal Michelle Brown. She roped in one of her longtime clients to sponsor the evening: hotelier Adrian Gardiner of the Mantis Group, known for stylishly eco game lodges and hotels.
On to saying hello to probably the Windy City’s most famous face, broadcaster Buli Ngomane, known as Buli G. She is wearing a glittering gold number by local frockmaker Anita Seal in a nod to the night’s Golden Thread theme. She tells me that from next month she will be commuting to Cape Town to join the team preparing for the British & Irish Lions rugby tour in 2021.
Then it’s meeting the Bay’s leading realtor, Jaco Rademeyer, who is there with his good mate Olga Hafner of Meridian Wine Merchants.
With real estate across the country taking a dip, I ask Jaco how things are holding up.
“Luckily I do different things, so when the one is down then the other one is working,” he says of his business interests, which include building retirement villages, plumbing and a conference centre.
Up comes Heinrich Schmidt of local suit-hiring spot Heinz in Style to say hello.
Things get started when Michelle climbs on stage to welcome us and quips: “Craig, you’re going to find that in PE we all know each other.” Then she acknowledges a few of the guests.
Adrian and Emma say a few words and in between spinach rolled roulade with smoked salmon and trout mousse starters and mains, which feature lamb noisettes and parmesan and datestuffed chicken medallions on root vegetable fritters, we watch the fashion.
There are not the rakethin models that we usually see in the Big Smoke.
Women strutting the ramp include SA rugby player and former Springbok captain Nomsebenzi Tsotsobe, and momof-two Candice Coetzee Gallagher, who recently returned from Ireland with her Gaelic husband, Conrad, after the celebrity chef got called “a debt dodger” by the Irish press for leaving a mountain of bills from business ventures that fizzled.
You’ll want to know about the frocks, and the standout was the signature boho-style dresses of the PE-born Cape Town-based Jenni Button under her Philosophy by Jenni Button label.
Jenni was joined by newer designers Lee Ann Ruth (whose collection was accessorised with Kitibella shoes), Amanda Knots (who turned up on stage in the nicest look from her collection), Cleo Allison and Project Runway SA finalist Ntombegugu Peteni.