True Fashion Try On Green — Khumo Morojele

1. True Fashion Try On Green

A sustainable design workshop and mentorship program to champion five emerging designers shaping the future of sustainable South African fashion with support from the Franco-German cultural fund and mentored by Lukhanyo Mdingi, Olga Pham & Buki Akomolafe.

1. 2 DESIGN WORKSHOP

One week long sustainable workshop and mentorship programme in Johannesburg, South Africa at the German Goethe and French Institute Facilities. Mentors provide guidance through teaching their crafts and telling their stories to inform and inspire the mentees design process; from Lukhanyo demonstrating how to weave our own scarfs with a wooden loom, Olga showing us her recycled waste garments and products made out of discarded material and objects she finds on the streets of France and to Lulama sharing with us her artistic journey, on how she sustains her practise while juggling her online presence and influence.

Olga Pham, Sustainable French Designer Mentor (left)

Xola Makobo, Designer Mentee (right)

Lulama Wolf, South African Artist Mentor (left)

Lukhanyo Mdingi, South African Designer Mentor (right)

1 . 3 MOODBOARD

A scanned and adobe photoshopped collage of my family from my mother and her friends travelling together, my father’s side of the family in their home in Lesotho, my late grandmother along with other nurses as well as soldiers and finally to my mother carrying me as an infant in a white baby blanket.

I use these images as the start of my design process, finding symbols and anecdotes to inform my approach.

1. 4 SOURCING

Sourcing material for second-hand garments in Johannesburg, South Africa. Searching for old worn out white knitted sweaters to deconstruct and up-cycle into an ensemble of garments.

My mother introduced me to thrifting in town years back. Our way of bonding through clothing.

This process is completely uncontrolled and improvised which is what I appreciate about it. You learn to accept the unexpected, spending hours searching and feeling for the garments that speak to you the most as a designer. I try not to focus on the outcome, allowing the process to take it’s own course and being in the moment of it all, focusing on how to tend to the pre-owned garments coming from European exports and how to reinvent them collectively instilling my own stories as a young black boy from the east of Johannesburg.

1 . 5 C ONSTRUCTION

Finding ways to sew together the different pieces of garments that were not made to be together. It starts with disassembling the different garment pieces then mending, patching and finally re-assembling them together into several items of clothing from knee high socks, dropped crotch shorts, quarter zip sweater to a balaclava as well as a loom woven scarf.