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| Thelma Mahlangu |
A moment with THELMA MAHLANGU is quite a bit of bliss, a
serenity of a time, a joyous encounter and, somewhat unexpectedly, a time to be
philosophical with life. Thelma is a fashion designer, but she prefers to be
addressed as a fashion activist and a designer. She is a business woman, an
entrepreneur and is ambitious about life. She is also kind of a maverick and a
rebel. When she was called upon to introduce herself to her school mates and
teachers at a fashion school she attended, she told them she was not there out
of a passion for fashion, but there to make her mark. Now, she tells Thembi
Masser, it is time to make that prediction come true.
Thelma lives in
Etwatwa, Daveyton in Benoni on the outskirts of Johannesburg. She was
born in Witbank but grew up in Etwatwa before she embarked on the journey north to do her
fashion studies in Pretoria. She is disappointed, however. This stint up north
brought a different dimension and philosophy to her life and now that she is
back in Etwatwa. Her home town is still a dilapidated mass of iron and steel
and zinc and God-forsaken. She observes: “The people are ashen and
crest-fallen. There are no luminaries, no role models, and no business acumen
to revitalize Etwatwa.”
She is a fashion
activist, she says. This was not the desired outcome - to be in the fashion
industry. She wanted to be a medical practitioner. To her sewing was a natural
occurrence that everybody inherited through traditions and thus, not a career
as such. Not a gift, not a talent. Anybody could grab a rag, a needle and a
thread and continue to create a work of art. So it was a bit of a shock when
she found herself in the reception of the F Wilson Fashion Institute School in Pretoria North
ready to be accepted for learnership and tuition. That was in 2011.
Now she a stakeholder
in the Gauteng Fashion Council (GFC), a government provincial body that is
tasked with bringing all fashion practitioners together for the common good,
which includes sharing entrepreneurship information and attending fashion
workshops.
She co-owns Beautiful Image Solutions which advices and dresses pastors and
businessmen and whoever want to look elegant. She gets a mighty kick out of what she is doing. She intends to register her
own company now that she is with the GFC, a task they do for all unregistered
fashion people. The name of her company
can therefore not be revealed now, lest “it is stolen,” she chuckles. “It is
going to be one of the trendiest fashion boutiques ever seen this side of the
equator,” she promises. At the fashion
school, when they asked her what she wanted out of her course, she told them:
“I am not here because of a passion for fashion, but I want to leave a mark.”
So she wants to hit
fashion houses in Paris and New York and even take a step over the one person
she looks up to, business woman Anna Wintor, the editor –in-chief of Voque USA.
Thelma says she will
bring change to the South African fashion and entrepreneurial landscapes, where
standards in patterns and spontaneity have reached a stalemate. “The South African size measurement differs
with those of the international industry standards so I want to bring a
discernible difference in this regard,” she explains. It is for this reason she
will also specialize in lace. “Oh, I love lace. It is the most exotic fabric to
with.” So is her desire to fashion woman lingerie and wedding gowns. Wedding
gowns because the traditional Seshweshwe has not been adequately fashioned to
create a beautiful wedding gown. “I have some beautiful designs lined up for
bridal couples, want and see.” When it comes to lingerie, she feels most of it
is not the merchandise the black woman is looking for, or feels comfortable in.
“Most of the time the lingerie is not their optimum size and this is because
shop assistants are clueless and shy to help clients when it comes to helping them buy the
right lingerie. They regard that activity as private."
Thelma also intends
to mentor up and coming business owners and established entrepreneurs under an
umbrella company. In this way she feels they will be able to beat many of the
challenges that bedevil the growth of SMMEs in South Africa. Although the GFC
was established to create business mini hubs to structure small business, more
needs to be done. There is too much red tape and at the moment laziness on the
part of the officials and thinking like business people deprive many business
people of growth. “Think of a business plan that failed because the plan had a
grammatical flaw but the product a world-changing innovation.”
Other obstacles
include the lack of financial education where financial institutions should be
playing a huge role to bring knowledge to their future clients. She is of the opinion that people at the top
in the fashion industry are paying little attention to grass roots
entrepreneurs. “These people at the top are unwilling to mentor struggling but
vibrant merchants.
“ Unclear and directionless Government policies
are also hell-bent on destroying SMMEs,” she remarks. “The registering activity is cumbersome and
this compliance thing is killing us.”
In 2015 Thelma returned
from Pretoria and immediately worked for a reputable fashion house where she
worked for six months. Her stay there at was not cozy, but it is an experience
she wishes to forget in a hurry. “As I said, the cream at the top is not
interested in people like us. They only use us for their benefits without
considering our growth prospects. You are only good when you make money for
them otherwise they regard you as their slave.”
While she always
wanted to do her thing when school was over, she was, however, forced into
working. Their house in Etwatwa was deserted; her brother was working in
Pretoria and her HR administrator sister, Ntombi, was now in Witbank after
their mother died in 2012. So Thelma headed back to the miserable surroundings
of Etwatwa. Back in Pretoria she was already earmarked by a wealthy Nigerian business
man with whom she wanted to share a business with. But she stopped dreaming.
“Now I want to work hard and the goal is to make money. In the beginning I
wanted to work for someone and find my voice. It was all a lie.”
You can never find
your voice when you are working for someone, she stresses. “Instead, you end up
sounding like them. But you have to work wisely and with patience to make real
money, and then establish yourself to make a mark.”
Right now she is
doing a good job of it freelancing. “It is tough but it is rewarding and I
think it is a good springboard to what will come later.”
It is tough, Thelma
admits, but she keeps learning a lot, and making and leaving an indelible mark
in her wake.
But she points out
that she is where she is because of the two women she adores, her mother and
her grandma. Both were astute in sewing and her shack was always full of
colourful rags, “satin, silk, chiffon, cotton and lace of course. I am very
lucky to be raised by them.” It is at that time when she was still at primary
school when she started to make clothes for her dolls. And, soon she designed
for her friends and later she was doing it for the neighbourhood as well, for
free. Her neighbour, with whom she was at school together, encouraged her to
sell her designs. She agreed and they set out to sell the clothes and then
hosted a party celebrate her feat.
When she was at high
school Thelma wanted to be a medical doctor and set out to apply for a seat to
study at the University of Zululand. But
for four years after her matric pass, her efforts to study hit a brick wall.
She mentions that this is strange because she was part of the Budding Medical programme in Witbank General Hospital. First she had to upgrade her marks. Then when that was fixed another obstacle
crept out and another. In the end she satisfied all these requirements from the
university until when everything was sorted and she was ready to enroll.
But that did not
happen as things went ‘askew’ for her and took a different turn. In the
interim, while waiting for the university to admit her, she became deeply
immersed in sewing with her sister, Ntombi. In 2011 Ntombi came across
information that a school in Pretoria was offering learnerships to fashion
conscious students. Ntombi did the unthinkable, she applied on behalf of her
sister and did not tell her until Thelma was called for an interview. In that
way Thelma forgo her medical studies and chose fashion designing instead. “Although
you could say I entered fashion designing by default, I made a pledge with God. The pledge was because I was tired of fighting the medical school for admission, God must bring His own plan to me.”
Thelma has a pleasing
presence and it was no surprise to her when she was literally offered a place
at the school during the first meet-and-greet handshakes. “The interview
immediately turned in to an induction,” she recalls. Although they were worried
that her designs bordered on the dark edges, they soon warmed up to her. On her
first day at the school she told everyone during the introductions that she was
not there “because of a passion for designing, but because I am here to leave a
mark as a yardstick.”
She remembers that it
was intimidating in the beginning. Many of the imminent students had their own
fashion businesses and many had immense experience. “So that bravo speech put
me in the limelight as I was the only one wet behind the ears.”
However, in 2012 the
learnership stopped as the government suddenly stopped funding the course and
students had to scatter around looking for finance to continue their studies.
Many failed to continue while still many left because of the shift in approach
to the curriculum. But these mishaps did not put the skids on her ramp way. Her
family stood by her even if they were living on the edges of starvation back
home. Her new lessons became computers, fashion drawing, entrepreneurship,
patterns construction and clothing production. Expectedly, she passed her final year in
2014.
Now, the future her mother and grandma envisaged for her beckons like a luminary star in the distant. With the GFC promising to back her, and the Beautiful Image Solutions doing some beautiful job of it and her pending company trending on the horizon, her footprints and her trail of genius are still to be fashioned in the blue skies…
Some of her creations and the white dress that caused a stir at the F Wilson Fashion Institute
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| Thelma is quite of a sensation herself |
