Every season, Thebe Magugu chooses a narrative from South Africa or the African continent that he “fears runs the chance of being forgotten.” This season he zeroed in on Saartje Baartman, in any other case often known as the “Hottentot Venus,” who within the early 1800s was smuggled into England and became a sideshow act on account of her physique, particularly her reasonably massive posterior. It is without doubt one of the many harrowing tales to come back out of the colonial interval, and that Magugu has been in a position to flip it into a phenomenal assortment of garments is reasonably unsettling, and it might probably not work within the palms of another designer.
A black crepe shirt and lengthy skirt had a print of a map in pink that highlighted Baartman’s traverse via Africa and England. In step with the historic nature of his challenge, Magugu imbued the gathering with sure references to the period. “I believe there’s a Victorian affect that comes into play via the excessive necklines, and quite a lot of the very conservative silhouettes,” he stated over a latest Zoom, “however then there’s that trendy spin on it that may make it appear like wearable garments for as we speak.” On the backside of the pleated skirt, the scalloped edges had a coin affixed to every tip, a nod to the way in which Baartman was “paraded round London for cash and cash.”
In step with the Victorian themes, there have been slim button-down shirts and attire with a barely excessive collar. Highlights included a lightweight yellow pinstriped costume adorned with a black ribbon and black crystal in lieu of a cameo on the neck, and worn with a large patent leather-based corset; in addition to a pink swimsuit created from Japanese denim, which had been “scratched and aged strategically” right into a print, revealing a slight pink hue beneath.
The story Magugu aimed to inform got here via most clearly in a print he developed with an illustrator in Johannesburg by the title of Phathu Membwilwi, which featured Baartman’s silhouette and was used to nice impact on a sequence of slinky silk attire—most notably a lightweight yellow caftan with slits on the waist the place a blue obi belt with Magugu’s insignia was affixed. “When Phathu despatched me the paintings, I form of broke it aside on Illustrator,” Magugu recalled. “So that you’ll see her thigh in a single place, or her toes or her physique in one other place. And I believe symbolically it speaks to that form of fragmentation of being dropped into a very form of overseas place; but additionally a bodily fragmentation as nicely, which is so harrowing.”
