Style wars cross borders
Lucy Kgweetsi | Monday July 14, 2025 06:03
Across the lawns of Greyville, regional identities clashed, negotiated, and paraded in sequins, beads, and gold-threaded dreams.
This year’s July event saw a surge in cross-border creative presence, thanks in part to Durban Tourism’s partnership with Air Botswana. The initiative made it possible for designers, stylists and cultural influencers from Botswana and beyond to take part in the occassion not as spectators, but as players.
“Fashion here is language, every outfit is saying something about status, history and visibility.” said Mpho Matsepe, a Johannesburg-based cultural critic.
Botswana creatives arrived with deliberate intent for the event. Their garments nodded to Setswana heritage, urban minimalism, and pan-African confidence. But they were not alone. Zimbabwean printmakers, Zambian stylists, Namibian photographers and Basotho jewelers also staked their ground. The Greyville lawns became a shared canvas for a continent still defining itself.
The result was not cohesion, but collision. A woman in Botswana-inspired leather met a group styled in Swati headwraps. Nigerian afrofuturists brushed shoulders with isiXhosa elegance. As such, the Durban July became a walking debate about who belongs where and who gets seen.
But even among all this beauty, the hierarchy of visibility remained. South African labels were favoured on the main stage. Influencer passes leaned local. Photographers clustered around familiar faces. For creatives crossing borders, it was clear, you had to do more, shine harder, and hustle visibly.
“You can feel when you’re not the centre,” said a designer from Harare. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not part of the moment. We just make our own runway.”
Indeed, some of the most striking images from the event came not from inside the fashion tent, but the city’s streets. A group of stylists from Lusaka shot a campaign against the Durban beachfront at dawn. An Angolan makeup artist ran tutorials from her hotel lobby. These were not side shows, they were proof that the July’s edges hold just as much power as its centre.
Yet the politics of access remain real. Who gets accreditation? Who makes it into official media reels? These questions are not about vanity but economic opportunity about whose work travels, sells, and survives.
As fashion continues to be one of the most visible battlegrounds for identity in Southern Africa, the Durban July remains a key site of that tension and possibility. What happens next depends on whether the industry chooses gatekeeping or growth.
For now, the clash continues. And in every carefully crafted outfit, it speaks volumes.