A tribute to the real, makoya EMPRESS.

The real makoya EMPRESS and I.

My grandmother is the closest thing to human unconditional love that I know. When God decided to take our parents at an early age, he compensated with a strong wise woman who took on her role with overzealous love and gusto. She literally became the glue that held me, my sister and my brother together. 

Born in 1917, she has lived through colonialism, apartheid and now in our [insert sarcasm here] wonderful, rainbow nation, free South Africa. Her dad refused her an education past Standard 2 because there was no point in educating a girl child at that time. She was surely going to get married and her husband's family - not him- would benefit from that investment.

Florah Mapula Sithole.

She worked in Johannesburg suburbia for years before moving to our village, Botlokwa in Eisleben. While still in the City of Gold, she would write to me, send me presents (mostly clothes) and pictures of herself at various occasions dressed in Sophiatown era type stuff. To me she epitomised style in those snaps: simple, classic cuts, pencil skirts, long silk gloves, tailored dresses. My imagination would gobble up all those pictures and imprint in itself an everlasting blueprint of what I would consider a well put together outfit.

She quickly became talk of the village after retiring and permanently moving to our village. She was the Magogo who wore tracksuits and didn't cover her hair - things that no peer of hers would  dare don, or not, at that time! While others spent their spare time attending some or other village do, my grandmother would be in the company of her old Swinger machine, mending and creating clothes.

Granny's old Swinger sewing machine.

She was a hard worker too. She was already in her seventies but would hurry up and down tending to the garden, the house right up to the roof. I'd get scolded on for not making the pots shine bright enough. She would often rudely wake me up shouting that "a girl must never let the sun rise with her still in bed". Imagine that!

An Oprah quote I later read in life succinctly captured what I'd sometimes think while watching her busying herself with some or other thing:

I've also found myself feeling really sorry for her too though. She, along with many others, were dealt a band hand by the system. In a different time and space, a brilliant girl like her would have definitely had a better shot at creating a life much better than she managed to.

Nonetheless,I picked up a lot of what I see as good things from being raised by her: a strong sense of self, a love for words and education in general, an obsessive need for order and tidiness and a delirious love affair with clothes. This, by the way, is the only till death do us part love affair that I'm 100% sure of. She is majorly to blame for my completely out of control love for all things fashion related. She was my style compass during my teenage years. She would yay or nay my outfits, would give me unsolicited advise on colour combinations, outfit appropriateness and so much more. We would have very adult conversations about various aspects of clothes,  at times, as though it was all that mattered.

Those that know me know that beads and leather are my absolute weaknesses.

Her coming to live with us was a breath of fresh air for me. She was a trailblazer. Thanks to her, I learnt from very early on in my life that the universe has purposely made us different. To not honour that, is to be disrespectful and insulting to the divine power that mixed up those ingredients to make you in the first place.

It would not take rigorous media content analysis to see that similar standards of aesthetics are constantly being promoted at the expense of others. Eurocentric over African standards of everything: beauty, progress, development...no wonder then, that some fall into the me too, copy cat trap.

Being a proud daughter of the soil, I'm naturally bias towards and interested in African fashion, albeit not in a silo. I want this platform to invariably be more than just about that. It will encompass people, places, stories and all the colourful areas lurking in between.  I am so excited and are looking forward to creating something you can relate to, enjoy and hopefully find something useful to take away.