Interview originally published in HEROINE 16

Thebe Magugu has always loved to tell stories. Though (by his own admission) he may not have been blessed with the gift of the gab, over the years his progressive designs have formed a material megaphone: pre-empting the takedown of corrupt government officials (Doublethink, SS22), cherishing the unconditional love of his family-at-large in times of grief (Anthro 1, FW20), and paying tribute to female freedom fighters in The Black Sash, a non-violent protest group integral to ending Apartheid in South Africa (Prosopography, SS20).

Originally from Kimberley – the capital of South Africa’s Northern Cape province – and now based out of Johannesburg, the 2017 LVMH prize-winner considers the narratives carried by his label, founded in 2016, encyclopaedic totems of South African culture at large: wholly reliant on local faces and textiles to capture a vibrant and bustling portrait of community and ancestral existence – uplifting those around him in the process.

Fearless in his dealing with harsh political histories, and respectful in his exploration of the anecdotal mysteries that lay dormant in his surrounding locale, Magugu’s trail for SS22 is blazed with bold ideas and a delicate appreciation for the female form. In Genealogy, a deeply introspective womenswear offering inspired by boxes of family photos Magugu found, the designer presented the collection alongside a film that saw him sit down with his mother Iris and aunt Esther to discuss the images and memories he’d lovingly translated with each sharply tailored silhouette, or knife-pleated leg borrowed from a Magugu matriarch. A utility shift dress in cobalt blue spoke to his grandmother’s nurse uniform, while an extended tie flipped over a crisp white shirt shoulder manifested an image of Magugu’s uncle as a smart young choir member.

Recently named the first designer to take over AZ Factory, the taste-making creative lab founded by the late designer, Alber Elbaz, Magugu’s infectious passion extends far beyond ateliers and runways, curating diverse mediums, and collapsing archaic systems. Magugu will do it with his bare hands if he has to, thrusting open the doors to a world far more liberated than this one.

Bailey Slater: I want to start by revisiting your SS22 men’s show at the 100th Pitti Uomo as it marked your momentous first step into menswear, what was the transition from womenswear to menswear like for you and how do you see the two interacting within your work?
Thebe Magugu: It was very tricky, I’m not going to lie to you. I’m so used to the female form, I was raised in a family of women. So to do menswear was tricky, because it was almost as if the male figure – even though I’m male myself – was a foreign body to me. I found myself looking away sometimes during the fittings for the menswear collections, because I just don’t understand the male body. I really wanted to challenge myself with my menswear collection and I’m glad I did, because the response has been so phenomenal. This week has been crazy because I’m shipping the last of the boxes to some of my key stores who have bought the men’s collection – it’s very exciting.

BS: Do you think it’s something you’ll explore further in the future?
TM: For the foreseeable, I’m actually really satisfied with womenswear, because I feel like there’s even more to learn, and even more silhouettes to explore. It’s just such a sprawling [world] I feel I’ve yet to conquer.

“I wanted to sort of re-shift towards optimism.”

BS: I thought the concept for the men’s show – a re-contextualisation of whistleblowers from threats to national security to truth-seeking heroes – was really interesting, why was it so important for you to call out corruption in this way, like playing existing whistleblowers’ testimonies from corruption scandals in South Africa over the show?
TM: In South Africa, as much as people celebrate and speak about its beauty, and the beauty of the people, it is still being let down on a very grand scale by the political leaders. Corruption is an important issue that so many regions of the world struggle with, but it’s really bad here in South Africa. I remember during the height of Covid, there were millions of funds that were supposed to relieve people who lost their jobs, especially in the creative industries. And then a newspaper article came out that showed all the money had gone missing, looted by high-ranking officials within the government. It’s things like that which really have to be brought to light, and with this collection I really wanted to make a comment on that. I worked with some really interesting people, like Jonathan Zapiro. He is the most prolific political cartoonist in South Africa, and I approached him to use some of his archival works that really confronted this issue. You’ll see those on some of the denim jackets and jeans in the collection. I also worked with Mandy Wiener, who’s a journalist here in South Africa, and asked her to tell me about the depth of the corruption. She played me some of her interviews with whistleblowers who have gone against certain institutions and government bodies to tell the truth about what’s happening within South African politics. A few days later, our ex-President got arrested, as soon as I came back from Pitti. And because the format of the collection was this idea that we seldom see our political leaders incarcerated – if you look back at the [Doublethink fashion film] it’s the confessions of these models getting interrogated – it was very interesting for me to come back and that’s exactly what had happened. It was almost prophetic.

BS: That’s insane.
TM: It was a very special collection, and a really important one that I wanted to make. But what’s also interesting is, because it was so heavy in the sense of where it came from, the women’s collection that came after it was the complete opposite. That’s what keeps the brand interesting, swinging between all this subject matter.

BS: How do these political commentaries interact with other topics woven through your design work?
TM: Politics is one aspect, but at the core, I want people to look at the collections as being almost encyclopaedic. Coming from South Africa, there’s so much history, culture and heritage that isn’t necessarily known by the world at large and doesn’t really make it into the big history books, which normally focus on Western history. I like to think my collections create encyclopaedic work, totem poles that tell people more about particular things that have happened on the continent, whether that’s historic or a projection of the future – homegrown stories. Politics very often forms part of that because my clothes will be a reflection of what’s happening, and often it is very political because we’re in a political time, a very politically unstable time.

“My collections create encyclopaedic work.”

BS: You’ve mentioned before about the idea of memory being a reservoir for optimism, where does that stem from in regards to your SS22 women’s collection, Genealogy?
TM: There was a lot happening in South Africa at that time – political unrest, people were dying on the streets. For two weeks after I came back from Pitti, I didn’t go into the office or studio because we came close to a state of emergency as a country due to the anger people felt. Our ex-President had a lot of loyalty towards a certain group of South Africans, and they somehow strategically formed these demonstrations across the country. Millions of rands were lost and property was damaged, it unravelled the country in a lot of ways. It was difficult not to be overwhelmed if you were around at that time, and [for SS22] I wanted to create something that was removed from all that. I didn’t want to comment further, I wanted to re-shift towards optimism, and that has always been the idea of my own family. Whenever I feel down in the dumps, all it takes is a call from my mom or from my family, or going back home to Kimberley, for me to feel replenished. I wanted to take that further and introduce that idea into a collection by having this conversation with my mom and aunt – for us to re-live all these happy memories instead of focusing on what’s happening around us and trying to comment on it. I just wanted something that was optimistic, light and pure.

BS: Why was it so important for you to involve your family so directly in the creative process?
TM: Because it’s a collection that focuses on them so much, I wanted them to actually be involved. So, over and above me going through family photos and taking what I choose and love, it was about getting to hear first-hand how they were feeling in those moments, because only they can explain why that pleat is there in one of their favourite garments, or why that particular situation or photograph is so special. Things like that automatically resonate with people, and I’ve received such positive responses from this particular collection because I think a lot of people see themselves in it. They can relate to old family photos, especially them being a point of reference for a more joyful and innocent point in their lives.

BS: You’ve previously spoken about how fashion can be a highly powerful medium in terms of bettering society, is this why storytelling is so important to you?
TM: I struggle to communicate verbally. I stutter a lot – I’m sure you’ve noticed, and I struggle to sometimes put into a sentence all the things happening in my head. I found out, thankfully, that all my ideas and opinions could be concentrated through fashion. I want to be able to communicate all those stories I’ve heard from my own family, all the while reflecting on what’s happening around me. But instead of speaking about it, for me, the best way I can communicate is through the clothing. So naturally, storytelling is what keeps me sane. It’s what I love about doing what I do – I’m equipped to do nothing else.

BS: Do you ever find that you want to say too many things at once?
TM: It’s quite an honest and organic process. Sometimes I find when I’m working on a collection, an element, name or component from the research I’ve done then starts as the seed for the next collection. I’m not trying to throw all these things in your face, I think as I grow as a person, so do the collections. I think it’s very easy for people to actually tell what I’m thinking at a particular time, because it shows. Now, more than ever, I’m realising that I don’t necessarily want to follow the template of the industry, but do things that I want to do from here on out. So if that means a subject matter I’m thinking about heavily manifests through my zine or through a body of artworks or sculptures I’m working on in the studio, that’s fine. The output doesn’t necessarily always have to be a clothing collection, as long as I’m telling my story, I feel like I can explore it through whatever output feels right.

“As I grow as a person, so do the collections.”

BS: I want to talk about your zine, Faculty Press. How would you describe the dialogue between your design work and your collections?
TM: The zine is not about me. With the collections, even though I’m often focusing on biographies and interviews with other people, it’s still about the brand in a way. But with Faculty Press, I contribute to it through an editor’s note, and then everything else is the brilliant work of other fashion designers and writers and other people in music and literature. I really wanted to encapsulate important ideas and people from the continent who suffer, sometimes from a lack of visibility. When I started Faculty Press, I was going into a situation where there would be a lot of eyeballs on me and the brand, and I’ve always felt like if I’m in these spaces already, let’s open the door for other people. So, if one day you do see a physical copy, the front of it is about ten to eleven ad campaigns for other African designers, and then it’s all these interviews of other creatives spread across the continent. It really is just another form of documentation, which is something that tends to be lacking, especially in Africa. I think that’s why a lot of people have been able to tell our stories, because they’ve documented it from their point of view, but I want Faculty Press to document and showcase the actual African and give them a platform to tell their own story, instead of it being told for them.

BS: Are there any other forms of media you’re looking to pursue?
TM: I do have a very interesting body of work that I want to work on next year – it’s more in the art space. I used to think there was only one way of participating in the fashion industry, but with the period that’s passed [Covid], all those templates have fallen away and I just want to explore as many things as I can. One of them is a series of sculptures that I want to work on quite privately. And then, I also really want to get back into writing. If you go on my Instagram there are explanations of certain things. I love writing, because that way I can translate exactly what I’m thinking to paper. I think you just have to march to the rhythm of your own heart. That’s really where I am right now, and that’s the mentality that I want to go into in 2022 with.