A designer collection

Abigail Betz

With a studio on the Vaal River and her business nestled in the little town of Parys, Abigail Betz is convinced that the rush of urban living is not the answer to design success.

‘Why be just another designer in Jo’burg, in Rosebank or Sandton?” she asks. ‘I don’t think you need to be in a hectic centre to make beautiful clothes.”

For Betz, this philosophy has helped her turn the process of designing garments for her clients into an all-out experience. Alongside her design studio and boutique, she has opened a beauty clinic that sees shoppers travel 45 minutes from Johannesburg’s hustle and bustle to ‘have a treatment, have a pamper and to try on dresses”.

The quiet of small town life allows Betz to escape over-exposure to the fickle trends of the fashion business, she says. It lets ‘gut feel” rather than slavish devotion to fad guide her in her work.

How Betz has put her winter collection together is a prime example of how her instinct guides her in the design process. ‘With this collection, I have been inspired by the fabrics,” she explains. ‘The mix of textures, colours, fibres. The fabric has dictated the style of the garments. It’s a highly personal thing with me.”

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Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 011 704 1927

aren Ter Morshuizen

The Lunar store at 44 Stanley Avenue in Milpark is dominated by neutral, soothing and earthy colours. The inspiration for many of Lunar’s collections, according to designer Karen Ter Morshuizen, comes from landscapes, including the new winter collection, which is inspired by the wild silkworms of the Kalahari.

‘This season is all about cocooning, about nesting,” she says. People can expect to see feminine dresses in soft, beautiful fabrics, cocooned in more textured, woolly coats when Lunar takes to the ramp at Sanlam SA Fashion Week’s winter showcase.

The emphasis the label places on being environmentally conscious is something that is important to Ter Morshuizen. She believes it is one of the chief reasons the label was invited to take part in the Igedo International Fashion Fair in Düsseldorf, Germany, in early February. Igedo is one of the largest fashion trade fairs in the world.

‘Europe is extremely environmentally conscious,” she says. ‘South Africans aren’t too concerned with whether what they wear is a local, environmentally friendly designer or a Chinese import. Europeans are very aware of this.”

Ter Morshuizen believes that South African consumers need greater exposure to locally made products.

‘We can’t afford big ad campaigns, billboards on the highway. If we could, they [consumers] would see that we are just as impressive, if not more so, than what they are bombarded with at the moment.”

Website: www.lunarlife.co.za

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 011 726 5558

umla Ngxekana

Working from her living room in Rosebank, Pumla Ngxekana is in the process of reinvigorating Soul Spice, her signature clothing line. Having parted from Fundudzi label in January, Ngxekana wants to ‘reclaim” her place in the local fashion industry and with other designers.

‘Soul Spice suffered because I got involved with so many other ventures,” she says. ‘I realised, when working with other people, that you don’t have the same beliefs about things as you do when working on your own label. You can’t divide yourself into three, so something will suffer.”

Part of Ngxekana’s new focus on Soul Spice will be to bring an ‘African aesthetic” to her work. ‘I want [Soul Spice] to have a link with African craft, textiles and culture,” she says, pointing out the West African coins that line the hem of one of her evening dresses, which will be seen on the catwalk in Newtown.

Ngxekana believes that for designers like herself a more educated consumer is crucial to cementing South African labels in the mainstream market.

‘It’s not easy starting you own label. We need customers who know they aren’t just spending money on clothes, but that they are buying into a reason, buying something more than clothes.”

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 082 444 7184

live Rundle

‘I don’t do minimalist,” says Clive Rundle about his studio in downtown Jo’burg. It is piled to its high ceiling with beautiful, offbeat and fascinating things: old mannequins, a hanging library of patterns, an assortment of antiques. An enormous, beaten tin couch rests up against one wall, a wooden statuette teeters beside it, the arms arching out across a space that is filled with light.

‘If it’s fascinating, somewhere along the line your brain picks up on the aesthetic,” he says of the oddments that surround him. Anything ‘made technically” provides Rundle with inspiration.

In contrast with all the eye-catching things around him, Rundle’s winter collection is concerned with the unseen. The words ‘Japanese schoolgirl” are thrown around as a unifying theme for the collection, but that is ‘just how you make a coherent picture,” says Rundle.

‘It becomes an image that we could work with, that became relevant.” The emphasis of this collection remains the ‘ghost of the garment”, as Rundle puts it, ‘the unrevealed aspect of the simplest piece” that, when focused on, becomes more.

It parallels the presence of greater ghosts in society, reflects what society at large doesn’t want to see: ‘Not Sudan, not Zim, not Aids. They relegate it to a phantom reality,” he explains.

Rundle, who has been called the ‘godfather” of South African fashion, has been invited to show at Paris Fashion Week and is trying to raise the R3million it will take to get him there. He hopes to use this opportunity to gain greater international exposure for his label, but is adamant that this does not amount to losing touch with his South African heritage.

‘We South Africans need to learn that our soul resides in Africa — and whether we show in South Africa or Paris, that is in us, that is our inspiration and that will never go away.”

Telephone: 011 880 3839

acques van der Watt

Black Coffee’s new winter range is called Ulterior Motif and it plays on the idea that ‘everyone’s a designer in the 21st century”, says designer Jacques van der Watt, sitting in his boutique in Melville.

‘The main focus for the range is garments cut in a completely new way, [you’ll have] seven or eight different ways to wear one garment. The idea is that it’s more interactive for consumers, so that it’s up to you how you wear it on the day.”

There is also the subtlest hint of the warrior about the winter range, says Van der Watt. ‘The look is more severe, more sexy, as opposed to the feminine, vintagey feel of our other collections.”

Van der Watt has a new partner, Danica Lepen, on board and describes working with someone else as ‘fantastic”.

Like many other designers, Van der Watt believes the flood of fashion weeks in South Africa is having a negative affect on the industry. ‘We are still deciding what our industry is. It’s early days. But the fact that there are so many fashion weeks is out of touch with where we are as an industry,” he says. ‘It gets diluted. As a nation, we see it everywhere.”

While he agrees that a number of platforms for emerging designers are good, he feels it is forcing the industry into becoming regional, with designers choosing to show in their local city centres.

Website: www.blackcoffee.co.za

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 011 482 9148

The details

The Sanlam South African Fashion Week winter collections are being shown on March 23 and 24 at MuseuMAfricA in Newtown, Johannesburg. Tickets can be purchased through Computicket (011 340 8000 or 083 915 8000 or www.computicket.com). For programme details, log on to www.safashionweek.co.za