For Maxhosa Africa, staging a presentation in Paris this season was less about drumming up new business than offering thanks.
The South African knitwear brand no longer does wholesale yet its clientele is international, so showing in the French capital for the last three seasons has been all about making sure the brand is visible on a global stage.
Creative director Laduma Ngxokolo titled the collection “Umbulelo,” which refers to a thanksgiving ritual in Xhosa culture, and used the clothing to retrace the brand’s journey since its founding in 2011. “Some of the patterns that you see here are signature patterns that we’ve established as the official DNA of the brand,” he said.
Models paraded around the Pavillon Élysée Té, a Belle Époque building on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, in matching sets: polo shirts and frilled shorts, crop tops and pencil skirts, and skirt suits that looked unexpectedly sensual when worn over bare skin.
Pearl buttons and marabou feather trimmings gave some looks a flirty spin, as did the cutouts on his skater skirt dresses. “I want to highlight the sexy appeal that African clothes also possess that is not showcased enough,” said Ngxokolo.
For men, he offered velour sweats, sprinkled with rhinestones and trimmed with geometrical patterned stripes, that were paired with mismatched tabard tops. While the effect was maximalist, the designer said his two factories produce a range of styles, extending to pastel and monochrome motifs.
Maxhosa has seven stores in South Africa, including one at Johannesburg’s international airport, the brand’s gateway to an international clientele. It opened its first overseas store last summer in New York City, a notoriously competitive and saturated market.
“There’s also a scarcity of luxury African brands when it comes to retail,” Ngxokolo noted. “In the future, I’m hoping that there will be several other brands from Africa or the diaspora that will come there and create influence, because I believe influence doesn’t come with one party, we need at least five or 10.”
In the meantime, he plans to continue seeding the label through selective pop-ups. There’s one planned in Dubai in April, and he’s mulling one in tandem with his next show in Paris in September. Fans of his work will rejoice.
