Fashion forward duo draws from the past
Dumisani Ncube | Thursday August 18, 2016 18:00
The creative duo, which is not well known in mainstream media, but is very popular in the digital media world, comprises of Mboko Basiami, 20, and Sadie Simanyana, 21, these two young women operate as Glotto, a fashion and lifestyle entity.
The duo has caught the urban public’s attention with their futuristic afro-style sense of fashion, which they exhibit every now and then on their editorial platform. They offer products and services such as designing clothing apparels, styling consultancy and make-up styling.
“Glotto is a youth creative platform, driven by what’s relevant and combining it with authentic African styles. We want to capture that hunter-and-gatherer era and combine with today’s trends,“ stated Basiami, the other half of Glotto, who is the creative director.
She said their influence is mainly derived from the Sub-Saharan region as they focus on using earthly colours, which are mainly brown, green and gold on the apparels and make-up styling they do.
Upon taking a look at their work, one quickly thinks of the 1990s music era, which had a certain style of fashion. The duo openly admitted that they are also inspired by the 1990s style era as they mentioned names such as Boom Shaka, Trompies and Arthur Mafokate stating how they used to dress and style up.
Their clothing line has products such as crop tops, crochet materials, suede pants, body suits, dresses and customised pieces. With the artistic make-up styling mainly done by Simanyana it is quite different as she plays around with the make-up colour fusion with tribal markings.
“With the make-up styling we are fusing with elements from way back combining them with futuristic thoughts. We are proud of being Africans in the millennium era,” said Simanyana, who draws from her Sekgalakgadi background.
“We trying to push something that has not been tapped into before in the local creative industry, as we also offer fashion consultancy by offering advice on how one should look and dress up on certain occasions,” Basiami said. Despite their entity being at its infancy the duo has already showcased their craft at this year’s Fashion Without Borders.
Inspired by African-related tribal and cultural elements, Glotto is ambitiously looking forward to establishing a Pan African fashion style. They have started with a range of body suits that resemble different activities in the continent’s respective countries.
The duo believe that being artistic and creative bring out an authentic element to a craft as they want to stand out. They confidently stated that they are not a trending brand but a creative brand. Glotto occasionally does editorial photoshoots, which they publish on various social media networks. This has made them reach an international market while their brand is still at its infancy. “On a weekly basis we get at least eight orders from clients outside the country,” Simanyana said.
With their product and services, prices range from P150 to P700, the Glotto duo said their target market is mainly the uptown.
The build up to this creative and interesting movement started when Simanyana and Basiami were still students at Maru-A-Pula High School. “As you can see, this is our notebook that has all the sketches and concepts we came up with starting from when we were in form two,” said Basiami, as she opened an old notebook with notes and drawings of costumes.
Glotto is currently working on a summer range of products that will be released in a few months as they are also preparing to celebrate their one-year anniversary in November.