Represent Review: Food Wine Design Fair Nov 2010
We sent our fabulara Representah Zamantungwa Khumalo (otherwise known as JoziStylista) to sample the delights at this year’s Food Wine Design Fair at Hyde Park. For more photos of the event visit our Flickr set of the event here. Over to the fab diva Zama… Sharpile sisi wami! It’s 32 degrees C on a Monday afternoon. I’m inside a computer lab on campus and the guy sitting next to me is giving me the side eye because I’ve been starring at this screen for the past hour. I find it hard to believe that, just yesterday, I was on the roof-top of the Hyde Park shopping centre for the annual Food Wine Design Fair. Why is it so hard for me to believe this? Well, for a start, it was raining cats and dogs in most of Joziland (okay maybe not cats and dogs, but definitely kittens and puppies!), I was in the company of amazing people (and not the weirdo sitting next to me) and – and this is favourite part, I was eating freshly baked bread, heaven sent chocolate brownies and drinking exotic coffee. This year’s Fair pulled out all the stops! There were exhibiters from as close as Soweto, to as far as Cape Town and Limpopo. I started off by scouting the place, walking around and going to the stall that grabbed my attention. The first one was Mielie. This small community business creates beautiful handcrafted pieces made from recycled fabric. I spent a good 30 minutes at their stall drooling over the different designs of their bags. Another stall with great bags was Barok, a Limpopo based company. They have very interesting designs and I loved their use of different textures and fabrics. Just in case you were wondering, yes, I have a bag addiction… Now that we’ve got that out of the way… I found myself in the vicinity of the food stalls and being the food lover that I am, I couldn’t resist the temptation to try out the different foods. I tried out banana chutney and it was orgasmic, to say the least! The only chutney I’d ever had before that was Mrs Ball’s Chutney. I don’t think I even knew there were other chutney’s out there. Something else I found strange yet very tasteful was beetroot jam! The shocking thing is, it wasn’t even RED! Food and design aside, the highlight of the Fair for me was the Marie Claire Pop up store. The Marie Claire stall was very interactive; it had cool gadgets, great wine, a vintage sale and a chance to meet the editors of the magazine. I didn’t...
Represent Interview: MOOI in Durban
Our Durban-based Representah @_thanda_ chats to Fiona and Lauren, the aspirational entrepreneurs behind the gorgeous Glenwood-based boutique Mooi in Durban. Sharpile Thanda! What inspired you to open Mooi? We wanted to showcase Durban talents and support local community based projects with the emphasis being on Restore Revive Recycle What can we find in the shop? Fashion, home décor, retro furniture and gifts and our target market is broad from little ones to ladies. What were the challenges in opening your own small business? Keeping overheads manageable, setting up costs ie stock purchasing and shop design as we did all shop fitting ourselves. How has the shop been received in Durban? Durban is a different city when it comes to support of the arts and fashion as there is the plenty of talent but not enough support. We are a destination shop which helps but we do not have enough foot traffic, this is one of our biggest draw backs. Who are your top 4 design inspirations? a) Mooi as we do all our own retro finds and décor ourselves b) Dino Galetti Creative Director of Tequila and Mooi c) N/A d) Miss Moneypenny, Josephine & Mooi What other interests do you have? Photography and videography A favourite saying? “Life without fashion would be a tragedy.” How did you meet? Lauren and Fiona met back in the good old school days somewhere between std 7 and std 8. We have been friends ever since. Fiona lived in the uk for 11 years from 1997 to 2008 whilst Lauren ran her children’s label Tigerlily and on Fiona’s return we made contact again and rekindled their friendship and the rest is history. The partnership has been an easy one to maintain as each has their own style, creativity and ideas. Anyone interested in finding out more, get in touch with the owners Fiona Galetti 0724026689 or Lauren Berry 0842085517. To visit Mooi pop in to: 100 Bulwer road Glenwood DBN or call 031 201...
Review: Die Antwoord live in Belgium – ZEFFING HOT!
On the way to watch Die Antwoord last night all healthy eating habits were broken as we chowed down at our local fastfood outlet to get to the show on time. Behind us two young women in their early 20s were perched at a window booth doing that annoying noughties thing, playing music on their cellphone at full volume. It was a depressing set of soppy badly-produced RnB and as my partner-in-crime put it so aptly, there’s no worse ‘bad RnB’ than French RnB. The girls loved it though and sang along to every lyric mimicking the sadness, the heartbreak, the ecstasy of whichever madamoiselle’s mediocre voice was blaring out. I was on the brink of heartburn from the sheer painfulness of it all until they suddenly switched stations and I sat back enraptured. The RnB turned into a Bollywood hitsong, the girls jumped giddily up during the opening notes and began to act out a choreographed dance routine while singing every word of the song. The point is, they certainly didn’t look or sound Indian and yet they knew the lyrics by heart. You see, they’d bought into the package deal of the Bollywood song, they clearly loved the exotic melody, the high-pitched rise-and-fall singing style; and their clean dance moves showed they’d spent hours imitating the music video. They loved it so much that they’d learnt the words, every single one of them, while more than likely not understanding a single one. Little did I realise that I would experience this same feeling of awe times one million a little over an hour later, as I listened to hundreds of European fans singing along to Die Antwoord’s mishmashed South African lyrics in a beautifully rof yet finely perfected South African accent. So much of naas. I just couldn’t get the grin off my face throughout the performance, and looking back, nor could most of the audience. It was absolutely thrilling – Die Antwoord is the modern-day antidote to boring live music performances. I’m no music fundi but I am certainly a music lover and I can attest that throughout my lifespan and certainly way before that, English language songs, largely from UK and USA based artists, have dominated both the global music charts and the mainstream ones in South Africa. For how long have South Africans complained about the rest of the world not knowing about our music, about how much we hope to enter the international music scene, about how we dream of people knowing more of our artists than the legends Johnny Clegg and Miriam Makeba. From Rock to Kwaito to Folk to Soul to...
Represent ♥’s Everyday Tweeple – Meet @JoziStylista
Back since the last time we felt truly inspired, uh that would be a few months ago, we were regularly sharing the Represent love by featuring some of the splendid Tweeple that caught our eye on the web. The concept is simple, we believe in the greatness of everyday South Africans doing beautiful things and inspiring others. We’re also tired of celebrity culture and just talking about parties. Get with it peeps! Then we got bored and let our updating lapse. Well we’re inspired again and today we introduce you to @JoziStylista – when we met a few months ago she was known as @MsLegend but ch ch ch changes meant she updated her identity. Meet our fabulous Represent ♥’s Everyday Tweeple @JoziStylista . To be featured in our feature, make sure to follow Editorista on our tweet channel @sisiwami Name: Zamantungwa Khumalo Bio: Entrepreneur.Womanist.ZaVintage owner.Stylista Extraordinaire. Radio presenter.Coconutist. Controversial.Future literary snob. Debater.Speaker.Lover of red wine Ms Legend I see you have changed your name to JoziStylista, what’s up with that? I started a blog called JoziStylista, I’ve neglected it a tad bit since ZaVintage started… But it was also because I’m a stylista, literally! You’ve also added ‘Entrepreneur’ to your bio- do tell us! I sell vintage bags and accessories. The brand’s called ZaVintage…I should be adding clothing and other things late next year… It’s meant to be a vintage lifestyle brand, ranging from clothing, accessories, antique furniture. I update the blog every FashionFriday. There’s also a Facebook Fan Page… And you love red wine – which brands of red wine can you recommend I’m a sucker for cab sav, so I’d say Vergelegen or Thelema. (get this girl a sponsorship!) The ex MsLegend, what are the daily rituals for living a legendary life? Besides being my extraordinary and crazy self-which can become somewhat ‘ritualistic’ at times, I update my journal-turned-scrapbook… In hopes that one day someone will discover it, publish it and maybe even make a movie inspired by the book. It goes without saying that the book will also become a bestseller. Tell us about being a Coconutist I’ve been called a coconut for pretty much all my life. I Grew up in a township, attended a multi-racial school, spoke a lot of English and apparently I twanged. I suppose that’s a recipe for a coconut. I only see it fit to wear that title with pride nowadays. What about a Womanist? I was pro-women before I knew what patriarchy or feminism was. I use to call myself a feminist, but that’s a heavily loaded word and oftentimes evokes too many mixed emotions. I think Womanist says, “I am pro-women” without the image of the women of the 50’s...
South Africa featured in WallPaper (again)
Once you’ve paged through all 17 pages of adverts that open this month’s edition of Wallpaper (such is the life of a print magazine – at least they’re sexy ads) and hit the introduction to the November feature – 200 Terrific Reasons to visit 10 countries – you’ll be delighted to see South Africa in there with the other 9 hipster countries to visit. Summed up by the mag as ‘The regenerators, rooms with a view and the World Cup’s design legacy: With a successful World Cup on its CV, South Africa has a spring in its step. There’s a can-do attitude that is seeing once-edgy neighbourhoods transformed, infrastructure laid down and national spaces created.” The 20 (design) reasons to visit SA mention some of Represents friends (we know the ous babies!) including Gallery Momo, always inimitable Black Coffee and future-forward LoveJozi. Go on, buy it and keep it in a place of...
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