Lesego Malatsi - SouthAfrica.TO

I N D W E S A F A S H I O N S P E C I A L
STEALING
WITH THE
EYES
With the streets as resource, Themba Mngomezulu and his
Darkie clothing label is a trend-setter, writes Keith Bain
“I’M WORKING ON a really
‘sick’ collection,” says Themba
Mngomezulu, one of southern
Africa’s hottest fashion designers.
“I need more time and heaps more
research… but it’s going to be ‘sick’.”
For anyone unfamiliar with street
lingo, “sick” is one of many terms
of endearment doing the rounds
amongst the youth. In the upside
down world of hipster speak, it
means ‘great’. It’s a word with street
cred - an ironic marker of what’s cool,
popular and head-spinningly trendy.
Mngomezulu is all these things.
That's why I’m meeting him in his
design studio in a loft space above
an exclusive menswear store on
Kloof Street in Cape Town. His
Darkie clothing label has been at the
forefront of South African streetwear
for a decade; he’s no stranger to
trend-setting. Yet, when he spits
out the word, it’s not without it’s
own inoffensive irony. He throws
it out like he’s rehearsed it, having
witnessed it sliding repeatedly off the
tongues of Cape Town’s streetwise
scenesters, a tribe he’s observed
and imitates faultlessly. He knows
INDWE NOVEMBER 2011
29