PARIS — These designers may be a fresh creative class about to make a splash at Paris Fashion Week, but they bring with them the experience and wisdom passed down to them by their ancestors, whether it’s their parents, three generations of their family or even centuries out of love for the profession.
Maxhosa Africa
By the time South African designer Laduma Ngxokolo launched his Maxhosa Africa label in 2011 at the age of 24, he already had a lot of experience.
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“I count over 100 years because Xhosa people have been practicing beautiful beadwork for centuries,” he joked during a preview with WWD.
Ngxokolo’s first foray into textile creation came around the age of 15, when his mother introduced him to machine knitting shortly before his death.
He then studied textile and pattern design at school before obtaining a degree in textile design and technology from Nelson Mandela University in his hometown of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He continued this with a two-year master’s degree at London’s Central Saint Martins, where he received a scholarship and chose Materials Future.
Maxhosa Africa started as a graduation project based on the idea of a fashion collection for Xhosa insiders. As part of the coming-of-age tradition of South Africa’s second-largest cultural group, which includes Nelson Mandela and human rights activist and theologian Desmond Tutu, young men are giving away their childhood possessions, including their clothing.
“My concept was to offer an alternative offer [them] that is not influenced or inspired by the West,” says Ngxokolo, who personally found popular options often rooted in colonial dress codes unappealing.
As a self-confessed Missoni fan, he saw knitting as the best medium to translate traditional beadwork. Not only do both techniques rely on networks of pixel-like units – a stitch or a bead – but the Italian brand’s artistic approach reflected the way he wanted to ‘apply our techniques’. [Xhosa] art in an African-centric way.”
While Ngxokolo is interested in contributing to the preservation of his cultural heritage for the next generation, he is confident that people will approach the brand as a high-end clothing line, one that is “sacred to the celebration of culture.”
“Culture is beautiful and can therefore be celebrated worldwide in the same way that people celebrate heritage,” he said. “My culture is bold and extravagant, but the point I wanted to prove is that culture can be fashionable, tasteful and worn every day – if it’s done right.”
Contemporary shapes brought to life the patterns he meticulously researched by delving into museums across South Africa and within months the project grew into the brand. Five years later, Maxhosa Africa’s first flagship opened in Johannesburg.
Today, the brand has five stores at home and will soon open a six-month pop-up on Canal Street in New York City. Women account for 65 percent of sales, which offers men’s and women’s designs showcased during an annual one-day Mxs Kulture Festival event that combines music, food and textile production.
The moment felt right to take the brand, which retails from $400 for a top piece to $1,500 for intricate long dresses, to the wider stage. It had offered wholesale early on, but withdrew after too many one-off projects that lasted a season and never returned, he said.
Moreover, the brand’s first presentation in Paris on March 3 is not only a big step in its development, it is also something of a turning point in Ngxokolo’s career.
Not only is he a new father, but he has handed over the reins of his 300-employee company to his younger sister to focus on the design and addition of home goods and perhaps even a baby line.
“This is my reincarnation, starting the brand from scratch and taking a whole new, fresh approach,” he said with obvious pleasure.
Renaissance Renaissance
For Cynthia Merhej, her label Renaissance Renaissance is the culmination of the experiences of three generations: her great-grandmother, who had a studio in Jaffa, in what was then Palestine; her mother Laura and an aunt, with theirs in Beirut, and her own.
But it is also the story of renewal and keeping hope alive in the most dire circumstances, as the name suggests.
Growing up in the aftermath of Lebanon’s 30-year civil war, “everything was decimated and just starting to be rebuilt,” the designer recalls. “Much of what I have learned about design, culture, art, etc., came from an enormous curiosity and desire to see what is out there.”
Initially drawn to fashion – how could she not be, after a childhood spent at her mother’s knees – she had become disillusioned with it in her teens, preferring photography and drawing.
Leaving Lebanon for London, the young creative returned to fashion, taking visual communications and illustration courses at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art.
“But everything I did inevitably led back to fashion, my first love, [particularly] because the way I told stories was always through clothes,” she said. She went back to Beirut and her mother’s studio, convinced that she had to take a step into fashion.
Two years of working full-time gave her the capital she needed to launch her own brand in 2016. The next few years were even more intense as Merhej “worked five other jobs because this had to grow organically” while she learned dressmaking and craft. she said.
A first collection arose when the 2019 financial crisis hit her home country and left Merhej and her husband stranded in Paris. The brand was selected as part of Net-a-porter’s Vanguard program in 2020 and was on the rise when COVID-19 hit.
She was back in Beirut when the 2020 explosion at the city’s port killed hundreds, injured thousands and left dozens of people without homes or livelihoods. “It really was like being on a roller coaster and not knowing when it was going to end,” she said.
Still, she persisted. The brand’s atelier opened in 2022 in the Lebanese capital, led by Merhej’s mother and based on the designer’s belief that producing in her home country is essential to re-promoting creativity in the traumatized country.
With prices starting from around 120 euros for tops and 200 euros for denim, dresses between 500 and 1,100 euros and jackets up to 1,200 euros, Renaissance Renaissance is also introducing a knitwear collaboration with second-generation family brand Bielo, bowing for fall 2024 ..
Informally marketing her collections in Paris has already put Merhej’s work on other radars.
The designer was asked to create the costumes for an upcoming adaptation of “Bonjour Tristesse,” French author Françoise Sagan’s groundbreaking 1954 novel starring Chloë Sevigny.
Julie Kegels
“For me it’s all about finding a balance between beauty and ugliness, seriousness and ridiculousness, because when I design I just want to have fun,” Belgian designer Julie Kegels told WWD ahead of her debut collection. “I also want to feel a lot of emotions and get out of my comfort zone at the same time.”
For this Antwerp native, fashion design was a dream she had cherished since childhood, not least because she grew up among leather and fabric samples in the wake of her father, a “super creative and very creative man” who deals with accessories and bags .
The logical next step was to score a place at the prestigious fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp, where she honed her skills under the tutelage of Walter Van Beirendonck and Dirk Van Saene.
After graduating in 2021, Kegels found herself in that “weird time because you enjoy this [graduate] collect and then you don’t know what to do,” she remembers.
The first ideas for a brand of the same name emerged, as did a whole series of projects, including a collaboration with the contemporary label Essential Antwerp. But she first decided to cut her teeth with Meryll Rogge and under Pieter Mulier at Alaïa.
Ultimately, her dream of launching her brand prevailed. “I always had a desire in mind to start something when the time was right, but I thought I might get a little scared if I waited too long,” she said.
Her inaugural offering is “about this woman who can be anything she wants, so she can choose what she wants to be, but there is a duality within her,” she said.
Her first collection, produced in Belgium, Italy and Portugal, will retail for between 100 euros for small accessories and up to 2,500 euros for a leather jacket. Dresses cost between 700 and 1,000 euros.
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