Considering Rich Mnisi is about unveil his first major collection in a while (a collection with women’s wear designer Theba Magugu) later this week at the SA Menswear Week, he still aggressively promoting his Fall 16 collection and finding new ways to breathe life into the collection. The most recent of his efforts is the Banyana Series, the first of which was recently released showing pieces from the AW16 away from the sterility of studios and perfect lighting and instead taking to the street.
The unconventional use of models jars you, as does the modest backdrop for this editorial series. They provide an interesting contrast to the high concept clothing they are trying to sell, as does the poses that sees one of the models brushing her hair, her back turned to the camera. It is this candidness, this framing of his clothes in the most fraught and human circumstances that separates Rich Mnisi from other brand’s and sells as a true straddler of cultures, classes, genders and genres.
Considering this, and Magugu’s most recent editorial that saw him place his models in an apartheid South Africa with fashion heavily influenced by the civil right movement and the beautiful editorial that came out of that, a collaboration between these two seems a powerful merging of ideas, and we cannot to see what their union will bring forth at S.A Menswear Week.
CREDITS
Photography: Kent Andreason
