Premium knitwear that celebrates traditional Xhosa aesthetics
MAXHOSA AFRICA is a South African knitwear brand innovated in 2012 by Laduma Ngxokolo. This was with desire to explore design results that would be suitable for Amakrwala( Xhosa initiates).
His original vision was to produce a ultramodern Xhosa inspired knitwear collection that would be suitable for this request.
As a person who has experienced the process, Laduma felt that he’d to develop ultraexpensive knitwear that celebrates traditional Xhosa aesthetics.
Those doctrines aren’t proved, as the youth we’ve to probe and actually document all those doctrines in colorful ways, I choose to do it with my fashion, of which is relatively a dominant way to go about it.
We’ve commodity to actually carry as the youth for the unborn generations so that when they trace their history and be suitable to find where they began as a people because i believe that no bone
actually establishes from nowhere, that we all have roots that we start from.
NEW XHOSA ATTIRE The brand MAXHOSA AFRICA
Laduma Ngxokolo is one of Africa’s finest knitwear developer & inventor of the Xhosa( one of the South African dominant ethnical group) inspired knitwear brand MAXHOSA AFRICA.
Ngxokolo established the brand 2011 with a desire to explore knitwear design results that would be suitable for the amakrwala( Xhosa initiates) traditional dress.
As a person who has experienced the ritual, he felt that he demanded to develop a decoration knitwear range that celebrates traditional Xhosa beadwork aesthetics, Xhosa inspired knitwear using South African mohair and hair.
Since also, Ngxokolo has entered multitudinous achievements and captures the hearts of numerous fashion suckers and media from South Africa, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Oslo, Berlin and New York.
Ngxokolo lately won the 2015 Vogue Italia gibing for Africa prize to showcase his collections at the Palazzo Morando Show in Milan, Italy.
likewise, Ngxokolo was awarded the 2014 WeTransfer Scholarship to study masters in Material Futures at the CentralSt. Martins and graduated in 2016. New African Magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential Africans of 2017.
Through his work with Xhosa inspired knitwear, Laduma is an agent of change, shifting and evolving with the changing times and farther engaging in the dialogue that keeps pushing traditional culture toward the future.
Intro Africa had a converse with developer Laduma Ngxokolo
about his Xhosa inspired knitwear
IA .Your brand morality is embedded in culture, identity and heritage, can you tell us what inspires the shapes and patterns in your designs?
LN. The alleviation came from Xhosa beadworks, the culture, the heritage as well as shapes. The process start from looking at the ancient beadworks patterns. They’re geometric in shape, this inspire the designs.
What inspires the colours?
LN The brand colours have morphed into ten core colours, but the colourways were also inspired by the Xhosa beadwork, as they represented commodity further meaningful.
Within the Xhosa culture, each subtribe it had its own colourway and DNA which represented them. They’re veritably bright and some are bold. I chose to look at these colours as the core alleviation.
