By Zuko Komisa
Thebe Magugu, a multi award-winning fashion designer, whose style has amassed global appeal is a designer you must pay careful attention to. He’s the first African designer to receive the coveted LVMH Young Fashion Designers Award in 2019 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in the seven-year history of the competition.
The award came with a EUR 300,000 grant, a one-year mentoring program given by the Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton team, widely known as the LVMH team, covering a range of fields of expertise (intellectual property, sourcing, production and distribution, image and communication, marketing, sustainable development).
Three months ago, he released this short film, the SS21 collection, titled COUNTER INTELLIGENCE, based on a series of interviews he had conducted with acquiesced, attempted and imprisoned female ex-spies who served either for the apartheid government or defected to the other side, effectively becoming double agents in the process.
His work was about translating some of these stories into the collection.
He recently blessed the world with a campaign for last year’s autumn/winter 2020 Collections (AW20’s) bringing his ground-breaking “ANTHRO 1” series to the Paris Fashion Week calendar for the first time. This was an exploration of items closely identified with his childhood in the township of Galeshewe in Kimberly. Here are some of the iconic images that will resonate with many South Africans.
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In his fight against COVID 19, he has recently collaborated with Adidas to create trendy masks to donate to schools in his hometown of Kimberley. The print is influenced by the kitchen-table print, which has always been synonymous with home and safety.


