Growing up in a township outside Johannesburg, Tshepo Mohlala was mocked for wearing skinny jeans before they were popular.
More than a decade later, ridicule has turned into admiration as the 32-year-old is now a successful fashion designer making denim praised by global celebrities including Beyonce and Meghan Markle.
“The township was never ready for my sense of style,” he said, sitting in his atelier in a trendy redeveloped industrial building in Johannesburg.
Photo: AFP
The South African entrepreneur has made a name for himself in the past few years with tailor-made jeans targeting African women who, poorly served by Western brands, struggled to find a perfect fit.
“A whole lot of African women have a tiny waist and big booties, and big hips and tiny legs,” said Mohlala, a slender man with close-cropped hair and a goatee framing a broad smile.
“We created a range of jeans using raw denim with no stretch that is super tailored for women,” he said.
Photo: AFP
Before they were clients, women were a source of inspiration for Mohlala. The logo of Tshepo Jeans, his firm, is a stylised crown with three spikes representing the three women who marked his life. His mother taught him resourcefulness, his grandmother taught him to behave like a gentleman and a stylish aunt introduced him to fashion.
Later, when he was short of money and forced to drop out of fashion school, it was a fourth woman he was dating who helped him set up his business in 2015.
“She was like: ‘Yo, dude, listen, I see you’re obsessed with this thing, here is access to 8,000 [rand] and go ahead and start your business,’” Mohlala said. “I took that loan and went to buy myself some fabric and created the first range of jeans.”
The line got traction as he cleverly advertised it on social media, creating anticipation — “Something big is coming” — and telling his own story.
Now about 10 tailors sew away behind large windows under the high ceiling of his workshop. Tshepo Jeans’ top-range denim is made from cotton produced in neighboring Zimbabwe, which is then sent to a mill in Japan before being cut and assembled back in Johannesburg.
Many local customers like a light denim “with a bit of stretch” that is “comfortable” and “breathable,” making it well suited for the hot African weather, Mohlala said.
Personalized pairs sell for about US$375, the equivalent of 7,128 rand, just less than it cost Mohlala to start his business.
Orders come from all over the world.
In 2019, the brand got a massive boost from Meghan Markle, who bought a pair during a trip to the continent.
“A lot of South Africans at the time would say: ‘Why would I buy Tshepo?’ and then you have the Duchess of Sussex coming here, really calling me and begging: ‘I need to get a pair of jeans from you before I leave the country,’” Mohlala said.
A year later, US pop star Beyonce listed Tshepo Jeans among brands she admired.
“Celebrity endorsement has really helped build our brand and opened up doors for us on a global scale,” Mohlala said.
“He is winning hearts abroad and in South Africa,” said denim fanatic Thando Made, who runs a fashion blog about jeans.
“Denim is like religion: You choose the one that works for you,” Made said. “In this space that Tshepo is in, he speaks to somebody who wants to embody the pride of being South African.”
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS