Paris Fashion Week, one of the most closely watched institutions in the global fashion economy, opened its official Womenswear Ready-to-Wear calendar this season to a milestone: MaXhosa Africa presented Izihlwele Zivumile (The Ancestors Have Approved), the brand’s first full runway show on that calendar. The collection, rooted in memory, ancestry and the generations that carried the brand to that moment, was translated into a contemporary fashion language through silhouette, textile, construction and craft.
The show invitation itself took the form of a MaXhosa “passport”, a symbol of the roots and cultural stories people carry with them wherever they go. For those moving through the week’s schedule of fittings, shows, showroom appointments, dinners and meetings, it was a statement that African culture had arrived with its own codes, confidence and point of view.
The writer of this account, an African woman from Port Shepstone in KwaZulu-Natal now based in Johannesburg, had come to Paris for her first experience of the week. She wanted to understand fashion as an ecosystem: who creates it, who buys it, who amplifies it, who builds the brands, and how relationships made in one city can move fashion across the world. The city itself, with its pale stone buildings, balconies, boulevards, café tables on the pavements, scooters in traffic and the Seine appearing between buildings, gave fashion a magnificent backdrop. Outside every show, the pavement became its own runway, with editors, buyers, stylists, celebrities, influencers, models, fashion house staff, photographers, PR teams and spectators, and a single recognisable face could raise ten phone cameras at once.
Her presence in those rooms was shaped by what MaXhosa had done and by the work of African designers who have spent years pushing African fashion, craftsmanship and cultural references onto international stages. It meant she could walk into meetings with curiosity and ambition without feeling she needed to leave her Africanness at the door.
One encounter carried particular weight. Kobi Halperin, born in Israel to Hungarian parents, built his career in New York and draws from travel, art, architecture, history and cultures. The writer, whose Instagram bio reads “International Zulu Girl”, chatted with Halperin as he styled her look for his SS27 show. Wearing a piece from his collection, A Common Thread, felt almost like being in her own skin. The collection explores connection in a world shaped by cultures, histories, identities and ways of seeing. Inspired by the story of the Tower of Babel, it asks how we find our way back to one another without surrendering the things that make us distinct.
Their stories differ, but she recognised the instinct to resist the idea that entering a larger world requires abandoning the one that formed you. His work carries the imprint of his heritage while absorbing the cultures and places he encounters.
Her appreciation of his design approach comes down to several things. His femininity has strength in it: there is sensuality but also presence, and the clothes move around the body without swallowing the woman wearing them. There is also detail that rewards curiosity. As a Zulu woman, she grew up in a culture where what we wear tells you where we come from, what we are celebrating, who made something and why a detail matters. In his work you notice the silhouette first, then embroidery, lace, texture, embellishment and print reveal themselves. There is a real human hand in the work, which feels luxurious in a fashion world that can sometimes feel fast and disposable. He also designs glamour for women who have somewhere to go: romance and occasion, but also tailoring, ease and movement. Ready-to-wear fascinates her because it is where fashion has to negotiate with real life, and commercially somebody has to want to own it. Finally, different worlds are allowed to exist in the same garment. Moving from small-town KwaZulu-Natal to Johannesburg taught her that identity rarely exists in only one register, and in Halperin’s work difference does not need to be flattened to create harmony.
She first came across Halperin almost 10 years ago, while studying media in Durban, doing radio and auditioning. His namesake label was barely two years old, he had begun attracting the attention of some of America’s biggest retailers and had just joined the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the industry body that had placed him within the American fashion establishment.
Around that time, Halperin spoke about seeing an African woman at a Paris airport, dressed in traditional clothing and carrying a child. He described being struck by her grace, elegance and pride, and moments later seeing her escorted away by police. The encounter became connected to questions of migration, displacement, identity and the lengths people will go to in search of a different future, and it eventually informed a collection drawing on African graphic influences.
A decade later, the writer arrived in Paris carrying her own culture, not simply as an image or reference but with a voice, a platform, a business mind and questions about where African women can participate in this industry as collaborators, creators, decision-makers and owners. Culture, she concludes, can travel without disappearing. Women can enter new worlds without surrendering themselves to them. And fashion can create a conversation between worlds without insisting that any of them become the same.