Lookbooks that worked and failed

This was a good year for local fashion designers.

Although many lookbooks attempted to have us salivating at the seams, including Lebogang Tlhako’s Sibadala Sibancane (we are old, we are young),

Iksasa Elethu (the future is ours) by Mongezi Mcelu and Lwazi Madonsela, and Katekani Moreku’s Koma ya Mapulana (a celebration of the women of the Sepulana community and their use of plastic as fabric),

There can only be one winner: the Viviers Spring/Summer 2020 lookbook by Lezanne Viviers, who had spent years working with fashion powerhouse Marianne Fassler.

If Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood had a love child, this collection would be it!

With its bold use of colour, peculiar pairings of fabric and provocative attitude, this lookbook put the punk in spunk, embodying all the elements of a modern cotton eater’s (fashion connoisseur’s) fantasies.

For every Princess Diana there must, of course, be a less remarkable and less stylish Queen Elizabeth. Our choice for this category this year is Gert-Johan Coetzee’s Autumn/Winter 2020 collection.

Orange really was the new bland and the hair messy to match, with orange tassels hanging from it like cheap chandeliers at a yard sale. 

For a designer who has been in the game for a decade, and who is known for his impeccable tailoring and in-depth understanding of the femme form, this collection was a major let down.

It read more Edgars, Truworths and Identity than runway ready-to-wear. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should Gert!

Hombre’s Autumn/Winter 2020 collection didn’t lag far behind Gert’s, with outdated prints that achieved something I never thought was possible: making the colour black look unfashionable. The blasphemy of it all!

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