Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Joburg - Day 2

I have so much to say and so much I don't wanna say and I'm still fighting my inner demons as to how best to put it all together so I'm gonna go chronologically.

Part of my prize from the Elle competition was a free night's stay at The Maslow Hotel (in Africa's richest square mile, of course, Sandton). There's this incredibly cosmopolitan, Sex and the City, Gossip Girl feel to just being in the Sandton area. You want to order mimosas or appletinis (really froufrou), eat fancy cheese all from the top of a seventy-percent glass building, overlooking the lights and sights of Johannesburg and then complain about your boyfriend or something even more trivial ("Oh my god," you'll deadpan, "he served Cristal. Wow, it's Cristaaalll.").

We weren't gonna waste a Friday night in Sandton (oh my god, can I take a minute to reconcile that I am not being basic and treating Sandton like an event - because that's what people do. No one ever speaks of Sandton as a trip to yo' mama crib or the supermarket even though it's just as basic. People speak higher of Sandton than they do of, like, church or The Ritz) watching TV or trying to figure out the incomes of the wedding party downstairs so we took a shuttle down to the Sandton Convention Centre to scope out Day 2 of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

I think that I prefer MBFWJ to South African Fashion Week just because the vibe's a lot more focused. The bigger South African designers like Avant Apparel, David Tlale and Aidrian Kuuters show so you're seeing a more dedicated craft. I feel like whoever's in charge at SAFW let people go by with mediocrity (I posted about that here). But then again, there's also this air of false pretence.
You'll find the people who care about the fashion (editors, stylists, fashion students) and then the rich late-thirties moms or whatever is the new twenty now, who carry overpriced Polo bags and think fast fashion is beneath them, who don't really know or care about what's going on but like to carry the air of a fashion connoisseur. They're there more Mercedes-Benz than they are for Fashion Week.

Most of my photos are crap because the lighting there is so terrible and I'm working with my seventeen year old, outdated 18-55mm Canon lens which gets rather moody depending on the light.

The best part of Fashion Week is seeing other people's outfits and meeting new people and making friends. I was really excited to meet one of my blogger friends, Foyin from Dear Solo (she's literally so close yet far away - I mean, we go to brother schools). Her braid and eyebrow game is always fresh and I discovered that day that she is taller than all of us. In heels, she was at least 6"5.

And Jerri from According to Jerri was there as well (!!!). I don't know why I didn't ask for a photo with him - probably because I was still so stunned that he knew who I was and that he was incredibly friendly and smelled really nice.

Going to the Sandton Convention Centre was a very last minute plan so I didn't pack very fabulous or easy to work with bag. I looked like poo but Josh was, of course, a blaze in all his fabulous stuff from London.

 

I didn't bother with trying to take runway photos because I learnt a long time ago that the shutter speed will be too slow in four of them, I'll have missed three models trying to get the one at the far end of the runway and the photographers from The Pit (the section at the end of the runway, where photogs get the best view) will always have better shots. I'm just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with uploading photos and then I'll discuss my favourite collections. But from Day 2, it would have to be Laduma and their Xhosa knitwear.

When I took this photo, which the lady on the left was most excited about, her friend (dope afro) was like, "Oh, he's [Josh] like our son!" Fashion people are so fun.

The most exciting part, meeting Minnie Dlamini and being treated to the front row at every show experience, will be Day 3 and I have no idea how I'm not going to publish a novella about it.

A big thank you to Elle Magazine and Mercedes-Benz South Africa for making this such a wonderful time that turned out to be more than I'd ever hoped it would.

Forever

Khenzo xx

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