Thebe Magugu (Q7989)
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Thebe Magugu is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Thebe Magugu |
Thebe Magugu is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
founder and creative director
Each season, Thebe Magugu chooses a story from South Africa or the African continent that he “fears runs the risk of being forgotten.” This season he zeroed in on Saartje Baartman, otherwise known as the “Hottentot Venus,” who in the early 1800s was smuggled into England and turned into a sideshow act on account of her body, especially her rather large posterior. It is one of the many harrowing stories to come out of the colonial period, and that Magugu has been able to turn it into a beautiful collection of clothes is rather unsettling, and it would likely not work in the hands of any other designer.A black crepe shirt and long skirt had a print of a map in pink that highlighted Baartman’s traverse through Africa and England. In keeping with the historical nature of his project, Magugu imbued the collection with certain references to the era. “I think there’s a Victorian influence that comes into play through the high necklines, and a lot of the very conservative silhouettes,” he said over a recent Zoom, “but then there’s that modern spin on it that can make it look like wearable clothes for today.” At the bottom of the pleated skirt, the scalloped edges had a coin affixed to each tip, a nod to the way Baartman was “paraded around London for coins and money.”In keeping with the Victorian themes, there were slim button-down shirts and dresses with a slightly high collar. Highlights included a light yellow pinstriped dress adorned with a black ribbon and black crystal in lieu of a cameo at the neck, and worn with a wide patent leather corset; as well as a red suit made from Japanese denim, which had been “scratched and aged strategically” into a print, revealing a slight pink hue underneath.The story Magugu aimed to tell came through most clearly in a print he developed with an illustrator in Johannesburg by the name of Phathu Membwilwi, which featured Baartman’s silhouette and was used to great effect on a series of slinky silk dresses—most notably a light yellow caftan with slits at the waist where a blue obi belt with Magugu’s insignia was affixed. “When Phathu sent me the artwork, I sort of broke it apart on Illustrator,” Magugu recalled. “So you’ll see her thigh in one place, or her feet or her body in another place. And I think symbolically it speaks to that sort of fragmentation of being dropped into a completely sort of foreign place; but also a physical fragmentation as well, which is so harrowing.”
29 September 2023
Thebe Magugu has been doing some hard thinking in the last year or so. Having staged a brilliant debut show in London last October, the 29-year-old, Johannesburg-based designer took the mature decision to streamline operations this season, showing his fall collection via private appointments in Paris and with a lookbook captured by documentary photographer Pieter Hugo. “I’m in a place where I’m really interrogating what works and what doesn’t,” he explained. “I am actively thinking about how to participate in fashion in a way that’s not as cruel as it was to me in the past.”Magugu knows how it feels to be the hot young designer of the moment, having garnered breathless headlines and A-list fans including Rihanna off the back of his 2019 LVMH Prize win. He also knows that fashion’s fickle gaze can refocus with brutal speed. Running an international business from South Africa is hard enough, what with the extreme energy crisis and the complications of manufacturing and shipping, without trying to adapt to fashion’s mood swings. “We basically have five hours of electricity a day, so you can imagine the devastation that causes for the economy,” he said of his home city. His lightbulb moment came when logistics for his fall ’22 collection were keeping him up at night. “I felt like I was running on nothing,” he recalled.Since then, Magugu has switched some of his production from South Africa to Madagascar and Italy to improve the quality, shelved plans for regular catwalk shows, and decided to focus on his customer at home as well as abroad. In April, he’ll relaunch his e-commerce website, which, in tandem with a new warehouse to fulfill orders from France, will hopefully simplify operations and allow him to better service his clients with a bolstered direct-to-consumer business. Early signs bode well: A heritage dress capsule launched on his site in recent weeks performed exceptionally well.And he’s doubling down on his heritage, taking African folklore as his theme for fall. Energizing silhouettes in mood-boosting colors are Magugu’s calling card, but he proved his flair for prints here too, with a nautical pattern of a 19th-century ship mid-capsize, inspired by “Mami Wata” stories about sea sirens luring sailors to their death splashed across plissé skirts, wide-legged pants, silk-crepe shirt-dresses, and go-anywhere nylon jackets.
Kaftan silhouettes are engineered to suit a variety of body shapes, with a particularly elegant chartreuse silk-crepe dress with a woven panel inspired by fishing nets. Form-fitting knitwear in light and heavy gauges, some comprising sweater dresses with cape details, completes the line-up.What does success look like to Magugu? He smiled when he answered. “I think often people are dissatisfied with my answer to this question. But I can’t tell you how ‘from nothing’ this is. The fact that I am here in Paris, and I have a self-sustaining business—that brings me so much joy. If I can continue on that trajectory and carve out a space for myself and my clients, that really is all I want.”
6 March 2023
Thebe Magugu put on his first-ever women’s runway show in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum last Friday. In the cavernously grand Raphael Room, Magugu’s audience watched avidly as models wearing his bright, neat trouser suits, happy-looking graphic prints, and dippily-swishing knife-pleated skirts emerged from a giant pink checkered laundry bag installation at the end of the gallery. His appearance at the V&A was part of the museum’s long-running free public-access Fashion in Motion series.And with that, the young guest from Johannesburg found himself heralding part two of London Fashion Week. It’s now running concurrently with the influx of art events and high net-worth audiences inundating the city around the Frieze fair in Regents Park (part-planned, like Alexander McQueen, and part-rescheduled because of the Queen’s death, like Roksanda and Raf Simons). But the timing was happenstance for Magugu: a live event for excited visitors to take in alongside the museum’s must-see “Africa Fashion” exhibition, whose narrative showcases the explosion and variety of young fashion talent from countries all over the continent.The appeal of Magugu’s brand is tuned into the life-affirming, upbeat international frequency of fashion—lots of pinks and vibrant reds for spring, classily sexy cutaway ribbed knit dresses, caped tracksuits. But there are deeper dimensions to Magugu’s work than immediately hits the eye, as everyone realizes who’s followed his Paris presentations, and watched his absorbing videos about his Johannesburg family, friends, and culture. So, too, this time. The clue was in the collection’s name: Discard Theory.Magugu made it explicit in a documentary video, which follows him making a dawn visit to Dunusa market in downtown Johannesburg, one of the mountainous textile markets that are dumping grounds for American and European clothing waste all over Africa. “In fashion school, we learned about Thorstein Veblen’s essay on conspicuous consumption,” Magugu reflected. “And how being extravagantly wasteful was part of showing off wealth and status. Here you see it all—all the brands sprawled out on the floor. It got me thinking that places like Dunusa market almost act as a sort of nexus between local and global. It’s like the melting pot, where all these sorts of things come and influence us, and maybe we influence them in some sort of way. A very interesting sort of a melting pot.”
10 October 2022
Thebe Magugu was back in Paris from Johannesburg again, a highly welcomed visitor to a presentation slot at the Palais de Tokyo, which is a must-see umbrella venue for showcasing young talent. “I wanted to do something optimistic. All around me, there’s been a lot of ugliness in the air because of the social unrest in South Africa,” he said. “So I just wanted to turn inward, at what keeps me very optimistic—and that was my family.”Instead of a runway show, he had an installation of his clothes and was screening a film of himself chairing “a roundtable” with his mother and aunt. On one side of the screen Magugu was seen playing the intergenerational talk-show host as they opened a box of family photographs together and related all their memories and anecdotes about who wore what, where, and why. And on the other half were his images of how he’d affectionately and elegantly translated each photo into the pieces of his collection.All over again, it was true to Magugu’s extraordinary talent for telling stories that honor people through his clothes—as well as a bit of a by-the-by explanation of how he became who he is through growing up in a family that enjoys clothes and dressing up. There’s a picture of his mom in a checkerboard mini suit, which became a tailored red-black-and-white high-waist jacket and a knife-pleated skirt printed with a black-and-white family snapshot. His aunt’s minidress inspired a neat pair of shorts suits—one orange, one white—teamed with black knitted bralette sweaters beneath. His grandmother’s dedication to her profession as a nurse was celebrated with a pair of blue dresses echoing the color of her uniform. The cool personality of an uncle as a young choir member dressed in a white shirt and black tie was captured in the exaggerated gesture of the tie, extended and looped up over one shoulder of a crisp shirt with high-waist pants.With his chic, young signatures—sharp, feminine tailoring, handkerchief-point sunray pleated skirts, sculpturally flattering knitwear matching gele head ties—Magugu tells stories that resonate internationally. As fashion ambassador for young South African creative talent, he’s a pioneer in the forefront of a generation that is now rising in countries all over that continent.
Kudos to him that he is still living and working there, joyfully placing the celebration of the strength and character of his family at the center of everything, as he did, incorporating Magugu family headshots in his interpretation of a wax fabric print: “So they look very regal,” he said, smiling.
29 September 2021
The world’s first-ever menswear fashion show, by Brioni, was put on in Florence back in 1952. Following a two season absence (digital stuff apart), Florence today hosted its first post-pandemic fashion show, by Thebe Magugu. It was also Magugu’s first-ever full menswear collection.It was held in a roughly bricked building at the edge of the castellated walls of the ancient fortress that is Pitti’s chief home, and which for this 100th edition is probably at around 30% of its pre-pandemic levels, in terms both of guests and exhibitors. This is a Pitti, however, which feels crackling with potential and dynamism—not half empty, but half full—and this Magugu show encapsulated that. It was the first time I’ve seen this designer’s work since his winning installation at the International Fashion Showcase chaired by Runway’s supreme talent spotter, Sarah Mower, in February 2019. Since then he has built a rich, deep, and distinct design vocabulary that was powerfully articulated today.As so often at Pitti, this show wasn’t your usual walk back and forth. Most of the models were seated back to back in a space meant to recreate the waiting room of a police station. Every once in a while they would all raise an old-fashioned whistle to their lips and blow. Then one of them would stand up, circle his colleagues, and stalk past the payphone on which you could make that desperate call to your lawyer into an interrogation room. Here he would sit, with an old 8-track recorder rolling and cigarette smoke coiling out of an ashtray, while four more models watched him from behind a mirrored observation window. Pre-recorded testimonies from whistleblowers in historic government and corporate corruption scandals relating to South Africa were played over the PA.It went on for quite some time, and I got the gist, so I headed backstage to track down Magugu. He was watching via a production monitor, and when asked for a chat gave possibly the most charming answer any designer ever has: “Of course! But would you mind if I go and take my bow first?” When he returned he explained he had worked with and been inspired by a journalist named Mandy Wiener who wrote a book,Whistleblowers, that recounts the stories of these individuals who, often at great personal cost, had exposed various multi-million Rand lootings.
1 July 2021
Discourse often pits modernity against spiritualism, but the concepts aren’t opposed. As new generations assert themselves, their relationship to sacred ideas and expectations evolve. In the last several years, South African designer Thebe Magugu noticed that shift within his social circle. Friends and relatives overhauled their lives while studying traditional healing. Compelled by their connection to their ancestors, these young creatives began to learn practices with roots in antiquity, an experience that altered their perspectives. “It’s calledukuthwasa,and the way it manifests itself is quite interesting because it starts as a sickness, a kind of spiritual illness,” explained Magugu on Zoom from Johannesburg. “It causes people to take this monumental journey where you leave for months on end to train under a traditional healer. [In the past] it was something that felt far away from me, but now, as peers have received those sorts of callings, it’s fascinating. Once they return, they are completely changed.”This movement within African spirituality served as Magugu’s starting point for the season. The tension between old and new is a familiar fashion theme. Still, it has rarely been approached through the millennial South African experience, and never with healers as creative collaborators. Stylist Noentla Khumalo’s background in the subject adds a layer of authenticity and the collection’s key print. It’s through the articles used within her divination—goat knuckles, bones, seashells, and dice among them—that the pattern comes together, each element photographed by Magugu against a bed of straw. Abstracted from their original purpose and transferred onto pants and blouses, the items make for a kinetic design that draws the eye closer. The tale behind the floating dice and textured stalks isn’t instantly evident, but Magugu strives to create pieces with the kind of visual impact that requires no explanation. “With my collections, I always hope you can appreciate the fabrications or the construction even if you don’t know the whole backstory,” he says. “The story is an added plus.”Despite his claims to the contrary, Magugu is a detail-oriented storyteller whose pieces could come with footnotes and citations. Instead of extra reading material, he has for the past three seasons been treating his audience to mini films by the director Kristin-Lee Moolman that serve as cinematic accompaniments.
This time around, the pair created a guerrilla-style short with influences that ranged from jidaigeki slasher filmLady Snowbloodto Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. “We didn’t have the luxury of rehearsals; it was just us getting in a van and going to a mine dump,” says Magugu of the clip, which features a cast of friends. “There are parts where it feels like a fever dream, which is exactly what some of the traditional healers experience. They get a passing feeling, an inkling of someone they don’t know touching them, and they’re transported into this other world.”
3 March 2021
Thanks to Ian Fleming and John le Carré, espionage has a glamorous reputation. On paper, the business of finding and exploiting secrets can seem all high-flying adventure, but its realities are often mundane. When Thebe Magugu read Jonathan Ancer’sBetrayal: The Secret Lives of Apartheid Spies, he was introduced to the covert agents of his native South Africa and how their work influenced a nation. “The images from popular culture are quite far from reality,” shares Magugu via Zoom. “Spies are living amongst us; they’re our friends, family, teachers, and even mothers.” Women like confessed spy Olivia Anne Marie Forsyth, aka agent RS407 and code name Lara, a former lieutenant within the Security Branch of the South African Police, who defected to the African National Congress, provided the collection’s inspiration. “I was trying to understand the psychology,” he says. “What would drive someone to commit high treason?”Stories like Forsyth’s fascinated Magugu, and he sought her out for an interview while working on his spring wares. Talking to her provided the catalyst for a lineup that tackles the idea of surveillance without resorting to stealth-dressing clichés. Instead of trench coats and dark sunglasses, Magugu delivered clothes with subversive details. Zoom in on the polka dots covering a translucent black and white dress, and you’ll see that they’re fingerprints belonging to Forsyth. The zigzags covering a bright blue parka are the lines of a polygraph test distorted into a colorful print. By using embellishment to hammer home his point, Magugu displayed a welcome subtlety. It’s common for young designers to belabor their points, but he kept his references innovative and precise.A companion piece to Prosopography—Magugu’s spring 2020 collection which focused on the Black Sash, a non-violent resistance organization that fought against Apartheid—this season’s counterintelligence-themed outing was similarly political. A revolutionary spirit moved through the clothes, at times with direct references (berets and screen prints of activists on shirt dresses), but the silhouettes were also innovative. Tan suit jackets featured origami folds, while asymmetrical hemlines heightened the impact of dresses and skirts. Magugu’s men had the same number of looks as his women, but their lineup was laser-focused on slim-cut suits and knit polo in camouflage shades of olive and teal.
Since winning the LVMH Prize last year, Magugu has benefited from the support and mentorship that comes with the accolade, but 2020 came with lessons of its own. Impacted by the year’s wave of travel restrictions, store closings, and order cancellations, he decided to step towards self-reliance, launching an online store and redoubling his commitment to producing locally. It also allowed him to turn his collection into a multimedia experience, launching a companion film by Kristin-Lee Moolman and styled by Ibrahim Kamara, which translates the season’s voyeuristic themes into a video. Few collections are accompanied by a movie, book references, and a history lesson, but Magugu intends to give his clients more than a pretty dress. “I want everything I do to be a resource,” Magugu explains. “It’s not just about the clothes; it’s that you can gain something valuable while interacting with the product.”
29 September 2020
Thebe Magugu staged his debut presentation at Paris Fashion Week yesterday afternoon after scooping the prestigious LVMH prize last fall. The first African designer to win in the competition’s seven-year history, Magugu paid homage to his homeland with a photo exhibition entitledIpopeng Ext,after an area in Kimberley, South Africa, the city in which he grew up. Fittingly, the name itself translates as “to beautify oneself.” Elegant and evocative portraits of Magugu’s local community lined the walls of the museum; they had been captured by two of the continent’s most celebrated young image makers: South African photographer Kristin-Lee Moolman and Sierra Leone–born stylist Ib Kamara.“These people and places were my earliest references,” said Magugu gesturing to a picture of his cousin Smangaliso posing in his neighborhood church wearing a fluffy light blue sweaterdress. Exquisite reminders of Magugu’s childhood were threaded throughout the collection, including a photoprint of his aunt’s corrugated iron roof that was abstracted to look like distressed denim on a marabou-feather-trimmed button-down with matching pants. Inspired by a retro tablecloth, the carnation-print trench coat had a characterful charm that was just as striking.Magugu’s uncle Nephtaly was pictured on a motorcycle dressed in a collared shirt that was covered in an illustration of two black women consoling each other by the Johannesburg-based artist Phathu Nembilwi. Beyond telling a very personal story, Magugu’s clothes are often a form of social commentary, particularly as it pertains to women’s rights in South Africa. As the designer explained, the print was a subtle political statement on the country’s rising femicide rate.Perhaps equally radical is Magugu’s unwavering commitment to producing in South Africa. The new logo satchel was handcrafted by artisans in Johannesburg, while his latest knitwear offerings were all made in Cape Town. With a new capsule collection available to buy on 24 Sèvres, LVMH’s recently launched shopping platform, Magugu is poised to export his special made-in-Africa vision across the globe.
26 February 2020