Johannesburg’s skyline has long captured the imagination of city dwellers and sojourners alike. For many it represents the hope of gainful employment, prosperity and big-city sophistication.
For others it represents libertine lifestyles, corruption and certain death by hijacking. For Bradley Kirshenbaum, the founder of Love Jozi, it represents his design brand.
Kirshenbaum started Love Jozi in 2005 as a T-shirt brand that picked up on a swell of excitement about Johannesburg among the city’s young creatives. The first Love Jozi T-shirt featured a silhouette of the Johannesburg skyline printed across the front. Now the Jo’burg fervour is in full swing.
Artists, property developers and other movers and shakers are relocating to the inner city, and people are walking the streets, dining and partying downtown. Love Jozi has remained right at the centre of it, taking the inimitable city skyline from T-shirts to coat and key racks, headboards, coffee mugs and keyrings.
Love Jozi’s new range of steel key and coat racks are shaped like a silhouette of Johannesburg’s skyline, seen roughly from the southwest. The Nelson Mandela Bridge, Carlton Centre, Ponte City and other characteristic Johannesburg buildings are sandwiched between the Hillbrow and Brixton towers in the east and west, respectively. At roughly 1m long, the coat racks come in shades of orange, blue, black, white, mushroom and grey.
The key racks are smaller versions of the coat racks and come in the same colours. Both items are flying out of Kirshenbaum’s two retail spots at Arts on Main and the Bamboo Centre in Melville.
Who is buying them? Well, I bought two key racks last week and, besides me, everyone from lingering World Cup tourists to visionary neo-prospectors who see in the inner city the potential for a world-class urban centre.
Real fanatics will buy both a key rack and a coat rack and may want to accessorise with a skyline keyring. Sadly there are no skyline coats to go with the coat rack, although Love Jozi will ensure that there will always be an abundance of skyline T-shirts to wear under your coat.
Love Jozi’s skyline merchandise is available at Black Coffee, at the Bamboo Centre, Rustenburg Road, Melville, and at Arts on Main, Main Street, City and Suburban. For more visit www.lovejozi.co.za