Thando: Yolanda Y’awa’s Luvuthando Dolls have different skin colours and characters, and they’re stylish too. (David Harrison/M&G)
Growing up in Gugulethu on the Cape Flats, Yolanda Y’awa was always teased and called names for being too dark and being too different. Now she makes dolls in shades that celebrate children of colour.
“I used to walk down the main road of NY1 with a song in my head and I would be walking like Naomi Campbell,” says Y’awa, who now lives in Nijmegen, in the Netherlands.
“The way I carried myself, I was a bit of a coconut. I was kind of the Lady Gaga of Gugulethu. I was so famous in my community and other townships, just because of the way I used to dress.”
Reminiscing about her childhood in “Jujutoa” — as she calls Gugulethu — she recalls how commuters in taxis, buses and cars would point at her and laugh.
“I was skinny, tall and poised,” she said.
She was that girl who shaved her hair short and coloured it blonde. She was that girl who, when everyone else was running away, was fascinated by Hippos, the armoured personnel carriers that monitored townships during the apartheid years.
When Y’awa was a teenager she was also called Mlungu but not because of her skin tone. The pet name young members of her family gave her was Nomnyamazan’egadini — the darkest one in the garden.
“When you are different in the township or in the black community, you are called Mlungu,” says Y’awa, who matriculated in 1993. “I was unique and different in the township — or anywhere. When you are a little bit different people will compare you with other tribes.”
People would say she was from Nigeria. She uses words such as sassiness, flamboyant and fierce to describe herself.
“I was this colourful, unique person who was very fierce. Outside nothing could touch me”.
She is hesitant to explain why she was different.
“My childhood was two parts … so I’ll focus on the more positive part in terms of my creativity and not about the other side.
“At home … things were a little bit of a challenge.”
She doesn’t want to dwell on the abuse.
Y’awa credits much of her creativity to her mother’s immaculate dress sense; every day she would wear colourful clothes, beautiful blouses and shoes with heels.
Y’awa would constantly busy herself with repairing broken accessories or changing the design of a garment.
Unable to fund her studies as a fashion designer, she decided to enrol for a marketing course at the Cape Technikon (today, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology).
Landing her first job as a sales assistant when she was in grade 11 and later being a co-owner of a hair salon, she also dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur.
Nine years later, Y’awa’s fashion career kicked off. It was the same year she gave birth to her two sons, Luvuyo and Uthando, on different days, but in the same year.
Is that even possible?
“Well if you are an artist like me, you have to have a good story, you know, the road less travelled,” she laughs, but explains that when her oldest son was about a month old, she was a week pregnant with her second child.
Aside from establishing her fashion brand, Y’awa Creations, she also released three albums. Her debut, CrossOva, was released in 2011, with Perfectly IMperfect following in 2015, and then a single, Bubomi Sana — It’s Life, Baby.
Having worked on her fashion brand since 2002, Y’awa thought of doing something new — but keeping it fashionable, of course.
“I got demotivated with making clothes for humans; women can be tricky, you know,” Y’awa says.
She “took a walk down memory lane”, remembering her own experience of her skin tone and being mocked for it. She also recalled her first dolls, which included a fluffy orange owl and a carved wooden bird. There were no darker-skinned dolls.
At the time she started to realise her sons, who at first did not “see colour and never talked about skin”, started to notice children with darker skin tones. Also, her niece, who has a lighter skin tone and who carries a beautiful Afro crown of hair, came to visit her in the Netherlands. People were quick to notice her beauty, exclaiming “she is pragtig”.
When people at markets gave her niece presents of second hand Barbie dolls, which were white, Y’awa tried to paint the dolls a bit darker “but it didn’t come out right”.
So she made a plan.
Incorporating her love for business and creativity with her belief in promoting social advantage, she designed her first black doll, giving rise to the Luvuthando Dolls brand in 2018.
“I always had a passion to help and to pay it forward. Where I am today is because of people who believed in me and gave me a chance.”
Y’awa says she wanted to have an effect on young children, “and what better way than a toy that speaks volumes, that teaches children to love their skin tone, to love being unique, how to embrace themselves as children with colour”.
Her first attempt was on teenage girls and how to use the dolls to empower them.
“These dolls are for everyone. Yes, they are primarily for a child of colour to empower the child, but if we are friends and we are different and from different races, then why not have dolls that look like each other,” Y’awa says.
“I don’t mind black children having a white doll, but we need to have a choice.”
Discussing skin tone, Y’awa notes she was aware of her skin colour when she was growing up, “but being still young in the 1970s and 80s I did not understand the depth of it.”
Thinking back to her family pet name and drawing from her own experience, she adds: “When you are young when you experience those things, kids bully a lot … You end up not liking the way that you look, your body weight or your own skin tone,” but “as I grew up, I didn’t want a different kind of skin tone, but I wished that perhaps I wasn’t teased for it”.
Having healthy conversations with her sons when they started to distinguish between skin tones was important for Y’awa. She would tell them how everyone is different, from light to darker skin colours, but that “we all need to respect each other’s differences and uniqueness because underneath all the skin we are all the same”.
She points out that in many cases it is parents who carry the heaviness “because of our past. But our kids don’t know that, they only know what we teach them. We should not instil our baggage on our children.”
Y’awa recounts how sometimes she felt like giving up on designing the dolls because of the difficulties she experienced in the production process. But then she would receive encouraging messages from her clients about how much the dolls meant to them.
“And it is not necessarily people of colour. South Africa is amazing because the country is growing as a nation.”
Today, Y’awa boasts a range of dolls each with different characteristics. They vary from “her alter ego” Shikanda Starr and Princess Nala (her mother) to Princess Minathi (God is with us) and Prince Amahle.
There are more than six dolls to choose from, including a doll with albinism. She also creates specific dolls her clients have requested.
Y’awa designs the clothes and accessories herself and styles each doll’s eyes, make-up, nails, skin tone, and hair.
“As much as I want them to be stylish, I still want them to have that sense of innocence because they are for children,” says Y’awa.
Y’awa has recently released a book, Ndikukukhanya (I am Light) and her new doll range is coming out in December called “Divas are not made, they are born”.
“Yes, I would love to make a lot of money with my business, but for me, first, what is important, I would love for each household to have a Luvuthando Doll, or a doll of colour, in their collection.”
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