Taken from Mission’s Bipoc issue, Mdingi spoke to Mission on staying authentic and the importance of revisiting the past to envision the future.
“I’m really glad we can start the momentum of this interview. Shoot your shot,” Lukhanyo Mdingi says on the phone from his Cape Town studio, by way of gently nudging me through pleasantries. To be fair, Mdingi is a busy man. As we talk, he is sandwiched between his latest campaign shoot and preparations for travel to Paris with his latest collection the following day and is understandably under the pump. It’s a momentum he’s held since launching the label in 2015 as the East London (South Africa) born menswear and womenswear designer behind the eponymous fashion label, Lukhanyo Mdingi, has showcased his collections internationally at Pitti Uomo and New York Fashion Week, on platforms such as The British Fashion Council’s International Fashion Showcase, was selected to join NET-A-PORTER’s Vanguard initiative and this year, and was named a finalist of the prestigious LVMH Award for emerging designers. The brand lives and breathes the “spirit of collaboration”, harnessing the skills of local textile artisans and translating them into innovative silhouettes, graphic patterns, and powerful aesthetics. The rich textures and colors of his designs are realized in premium raw materials such as merino wool, Angora Kid mohair and silk, tempering traditional cuts with modern cuts for styles that feel entirely new and unseen.
For the Spring Summer 2022 collection, Bridges, Mdingi and his team explored the idea of building a network (or bridges) between artisans, artists and communities to create a single body of work connected to several different individuals through weaving, handknitting and felting as well as a first-time collaboration with Cabes Gie in Burkina Faso on indigenous dyeing techniques and with Cape Town-based visual artist Jeanne Gaigher.
In its seventh year, as the Lukhanyo Mdingi label seems poised to go stratospheric, the designer remains intent on staying connected to the brand’s grass roots intentions. Here, he tells Mission how he plans to do so.
Divya Bala: Let’s begin at the beginning. What was the ethos of the Lukhanyo Mdingi brand and how has it evolved?
Lukhanyo Mdingi: In the beginning, the pursuit was to create timeless pieces that had exceptional quality but we realized over time that there were certain resources that we didn’t have here in South Africa. It became quite a challenge to really live up to this pursuit. So we really had to just shift our mindset and ask, ‘What do we have within our country? What do we have within close proximity to us? How can we use that to our fullest potential?’ We realised that it would be through the spirit of working with human beings, and craft, and that has been such an important thing that has informed the way that we work.
There’s a certain kind of honesty and integrity that comes with working with the human hands, a sense of sincerity and that’s really important to us, a collaboration, an exchange of skills and ideas. Even though it is a ‘Lukhanyo Mdingi piece’, we wholeheartedly believe that the spirit of collaboration is far greater than that of a singular. And we hope that the pieces people see before them represent exactly that, whether it’s through our weaving or textile development, by working with key communities in Burkino Faso or Kenya, it becomes this beautiful mash up of something that is modern, something that is steady, and something that is honest.
DB: How did you seek out the artisans with whom you work?
LM: It started with a collaboration with a textile developer by the name of Stephanie Bentum. We focused heavily on felting which is an incredible way of creating fabric by hand. It’s a hand technique of rolling the merino wool and the kid mohair and its quite lengthy, so you really have to be quite considerate with the making of it.
Thankfully our label is now affiliated with the Ethical Fashion Initiative, which is an umbrella that’s part of the United Nations. Being a part of a program such as that has allowed us to work with individuals and communities that are outside our South African borders. So, working with the Kumba community based in Kenya, who focus predominantly on weaving, and then also leading on to the makers of our fabric of organic cotton as well as our dyeing in Burkina Faso.
“Thankfully our label is now affiliated with the Ethical Fashion Initiative, which is an umbrella that’s part of the United Nations.”
And even with the weaving community that we work with right now here in Cape Town, in Khayelitsha, it’s an incredible group called Philani, which is an NGO and their main focus is on women’s health, maternal health and education but they have a division focused on weaving. And being in their presence and seeing their finesse at this school has contributed so much to how we approach weaving.
DB: Something that you seem to do so effortlessly is parlaying these artisanal techniques into a modern aesthetic language, and there’s a really beautiful balance between the two. I wondered how you managed to protect the integrity of these ancient practices without over-diluting them for a modern audience.
LM: Well, essentially, as I said in the beginning, the essence of our labor is a collective. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be in a position where I’ve been in the presence of those that are far more talented than I am in certain areas. Also, using trust as a way for us to achieve an end goal. I approach these relationships and these collaborations and partnerships with a brief of what I have in mind, but I am also really open to see how that can be contributed to make it stronger, without losing our signature and our identity. So, it’s a case of being open to listening and seeing what can unfold whilst also knowing who you are. So I think that’s how I approach my relationships with those that I that I work with. It’s really trusting their ingenuity to contribute to something that is far greater than my own self, and far greater than the actual clothes whilst bringing a human spirit. It’s a collaboration and it’s a team of individuals. And you can see it in the end result.
“It’s really trusting their ingenuity to contribute to something that is far greater than my own self, and far greater than the actual clothes whilst bringing a human spirit.”
DB: The styling choices you make with your collections and lookbooks are quite powerful. Do you do your own styling?
LM: Correct. I do all the styling myself. But on set, I will always have a stylist assistant, because it’s important to have a second eye and a second opinion. I like engaging with human beings on different levels, whether it’s a stylist or photographer, a tailor, pattern maker or manufacturer. I also find myself always picking up the archives of what we’ve done in the past, because it’s a good way for us to keep the integrity of the visual language that we have. But also saying well, what can we do that’s slightly different, to make it just an extension of what we’ve done in the past. And in the archives, I think that’s the only way that we’re able to still be quite cemented within the signature of the label, and the visual language of it, and the narrative of it.
DB: You refer a few times to looking back through your archive and being self referential, and even with the fabric techniques, and I wonder is looking back, for you, a way of looking forward in some way?
LM: I think to move forward, you need to know where you come from. And, again, it’s about understanding what the beginning was and what happened between then and now and in between, to understand exactly where you are today – and I think it informs how you’re going to move in the future.
All imagery courtesy of Lukhanyo Mdingi. This story was taken from Mission’s Bipoc issue.
