CATCH FIRE › The Smarteez: DIY Heroes From Soweto

The Smartees are a group of young fashion designers from Soweto/Johannesburg who due to the lack of affordable brand name clothing have started to design their own stuff. Their style is usually described as a mixture of the European colonial chic and a traditional African clothing, although I guess that’s just a very limited description. The photographes below show the awesome work of a guy called Kepi Mngomezlu and have been taken by Jonty van Zeller, a young British photographer. Zeller has recently travelled to South Africa to organize fashion shootings with the Smartees for his dissertation. You find more pictures of his pictures on his blog. I also recommend checking out this post on Dazed Digital for some pictures and a little short film taken by Chris Saunders during the research for an article that will be published in the magazine’s South Africe special. He also holds the copyright for the picture on top of this post. Let the hype begin.