threads

I have been on many sides of the fashion mirror.

As a teenager I devoured magazines and pined for the pretty lives of the models in photo shoots and advertisements. I longed to be a part of that life, in any way at all.

I happily fell into the glitzy, grungy world of modelling in my twenties and travelled the byways of that life, and the world, finding the truth behind the pretty to be whatever you made of it, really.

You could lead a rock 'n roll lifestyle of excessive hedonism or you could work hard, keep your nose clean and enjoy the glimpses of glamour amid a regular, sustainable career.

As in-house model for a marketing company, I observed and drank in the business of selling wholesale fashion.

Cut-throat and number-crunching, it felt a world apart from the artistic sensibilities of the editorial sphere.

Working for a fashion boutique, in sales and as media liaison, showed me the contradictory nature and fragile interplay between creative fantasy and cold hard cash.

Fashion you love and fashion that keeps the tills ringing and food on the table, might conceivably be two very different animals.

And now I'm looking at fashion from the outside.
A keen and interested observer, not yet fully understanding my own fascination with the creations of needle and thread, weaving stories and telling tales from behind the skirts of Cape Town Fashion Week and beyond.