Vanessa Pilay, the juggernaut behind the menswear label Hombre is finally on home turf at the 2016 Durban Fashion Fair, an imprint event of the Durban Business Fair designed to give Durban grown design label’s an opportunity to build their catalogues and profile through exhibitions and a runway event. With Hombre headlining, and less than two months after the South African Fashion Week where the label debuted it’s Spring 16 collection, Pillay shuffled the collection, adding a number of important pieces and showed them at the DFF 16.
With an education in fashion design from the ML Saltan Technikon and three decades of experience in the clothing industry, with stints in pattern cutting and mass production, Vanessa Pilay is a juggernaut in the South African fashion industry. Her label Hombre illustrates this wealth of experience. This testament to her inability to conform to any standards manifests in her niche, her medium of self expression. And the choice to express herself through androgynous menswear excites us to no end.
We have already reviewed the collection here
, but with the addition of new pieces changes the cohesive outlook of the collection and thus our review. Pillay sticks to the dissident menswear debuted at the SA Fashion Week, but she switches things up by adding a lot of colour to the new pieces. She also experiments with the biker look, working in fabric and pleather knee pads and panels into their skin tight leggings and boxy pants. There are also a few demure looks, an olive green calf length button up trench, loose capris and an orange cowl jacket, but the palette choices keep the collection consistent.
Photo Credit: Simon Deiner/Sdr Photo.