PREVIOUSLY IN PART 1– Landing in New York City in August this year was a full circle moment. A decade after graduating from Parsons, The New School of design I was back in the most serendipitious city in the world. It offered a reflective opportunity to document how my fashion journey started . It’s origins intertwine with a personal stroke motherhood stroke family story. See more here.

Part 2

Next, fashion.

Death arrived at the door before our suitcases could be carried out. 

Bombarded by loss and grief, life swirled in a crazy fashion around us. And continued to swirl even harder when we eventually hit the hot smelly streets of New York City that Summer. 

It was hard and confusing to leave home, and a new chapter began in the belly of another chapter closing, not yet fully digested or understood.  

But here we were. Facing forward. School was soon starting for my children and I. 

Doing the daily school runs, packing lunchboxes, planning and prepping the ‘waka-waka’ and Pirate themed birthday parties, playdates, sleepovers, bath times, sleep rituals, sports matches, the extra-murals and everything else in between during the Mommy sabbatical years was so precious.  

I did that!

And during the course of those two or so years I’ve never been more grateful for oversized sunglasses in the morning. And coffee. 

Now, New York City (NYC) is a different kind of America.

Hell, America at the time felt like a different kind of America. Arriving in the last half of Obama’s first term presidency when hope and optimism still hung in the air , there is no time to adjust.

NYC is the kind of city where you either do IT or IT does you. 

It was a hard pull at first.

Change in lifestyle meant suddenly walking, running, subwaying (when I finally figured it out)  to class, doing the washing and folding of laundry, carrying the groceries home or ordering same day delivery of fresh food from whole foods, to rain boots and snow. From an acre of land to an apartment and doormen. Changed circumstances, different levels of multitasking, a shift that gave no time to adjust or to dwell on much. 

Determined to right the wrongs from my previous university experience from Wits (University of the Witwatersrand) I got stuck into school to prove that I was an A+ student and capable.

In the years that passed since graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce degree, I had some regrets about how I applied myself then (or didn’t apply myself) and my ‘scraping-through’, just enough academic performance. 

So I excelled in retail maths, merchandising, fashion marketing and all my other classes even fashion design 101 . And then there was a colour therapy art class! Mandatory.

When it comes to drawing or any artistic endeavours of that nature, let’s just say I’m not a natural and the class was intentionally mixed mostly with skilled fine art type students and people like me. And it was one of those where you had to present your work to the class every week. Me with a stick figure and others with accomplished works of art. I was stressed, fighting myself mentally, putting in my best effort and cringing every week. That semester COULD NOT have finished sooner. 

But the kicker as it is in life sometimes was I made it out that class feeling so accomplished. An indelible memory forever imprinted in my inner being is walking to last day of class with my big art bag full of my weekly output, just smiling. JUST SMILING. Not with my lips but with my soul. Nobody could touch me. I felt on ‘top of the world’ accomplished.  Feeling humbled, pumped with happiness and most importantly seeing myself in the moment, I was in MY POWER. 

Every chance I got in my time at Parsons to talk about South Africa or Africa I did.

With every essay or presentation. I tried to give a Southern Hemisphere perspective .

It was this attitude that planted the early seed of African Fashion for me. I really wanted to see a situation where African fashion designers and African fashion weeks were written or spoken about in the same way that every other designer in NYC or London or Milan or Paris was and felt a determination to portray designers and fashion weeks from the continent exactly the same way as every other designer, brand or upcoming talent from the global fashion centres. 

I knew that there was extraordinary talent in Africa, creating and fashioning in extraordinary circumstances. Towards the end of 2012, I came across two contemporary fashion designers in 2012, from South Africa and Mozambique that instantly inspired me . 

And that was the start of my African Fashion era. 

Up Next: Find out the designers who inspired my African fashion era and how I got to write for Vogue Italia and be a part of the Vogue talent team… drops on 27.11.23

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