All Star Flashbacks on High Skool Coolkid

Converse All Star...Classic Style

In the constant search for all things fresh and current, we inevitably always find ourselves looking back for inspiration. I don't know if there  has ever been a brand or item of clothing that embodies that notion better than the Converse All Star brand.

Growing up we were never allowed to own a pair because as my mom put it, only "tsotsi's" (thugs) wore them and she even went as far as to throw a pair or two out, to really drive the message home.

Cut to 2011 and there could not be an easier or more stylish way to navigate the city year round.

Check out highskoolcoolkid.tumblr.com to keep tabs on what the cool kids in Joziburg are up to.

Cool Kids Navigating the city 

KoKOFIFI in Destiny Magazine

Now you have every reason to pick up November's copy of Destiny Magazine--KoKOFIFI is featured on page 98. Great story by a wonderful magazine shining light on powerful women with style (who said anything here about modesty? I'm fierce gotdammit!). No, seriously, thanks to the Sheena & Christine at Destiny for a lovely piece featuring KoKOFIFI alongside inspiring women "living their destiny".

Madder the Hatter the Hotter.

KoKOFIFI's Friends have Mad Style. KoKOFIFI Woman & Sowetan Beauty Ntsako. 

If you are in the southern end of this planet, everything is re-awakening to life. It's spring. And nothing is more spring fling than eye-candy hats complete with faux-birds of paradise feathers in the sweeping background of purple jacarandas. South African photographer Dammien Gounden captures some of spring's finest birds out in true style. Take Note. Hats are Hot. Madder the Hatter the Hotter. 

Really Looking Forward to Sharing a peep with you into Omphile's (L)  Wardrobe. The girl is so fly!

WAIT NoMORE JOZZIE

Synthesizing Summer

With Family & Friends. The INDEFATIGABLE Olivia Radebe, L. My Hat & Necklace...Made in Africa.

W/ Southern Sudan's Liberation, in spirit. Alek Wek's Skirt Sums up our LOVE. Courtesy, ListenIn Pictures. 

Gunius: Steve Jobs' Dent

Genius is like a raindrop that remains an individual spark even as it enters an ocean, even as it's swallowed by surrounding waters and becomes part of the sea. Somehow, this little raindrop miraculously manages to give off reverberating ripples of itself as it rides new waves which carry it further ashore. True genius is near impossible. How can you send ripples through an ocean while riding a wave that swallows you? You can't. That's why genius is genius. It is a rarity, an anomaly against the best estimation of possibility. In music, a name such as Charlie Parker or Miles Davis may be equated to genius. In political intellectual agility, Nelson Mandela or King Chaka Zulu. Steve Jobs is undoubtably the design genius of our times. His life's ripple was so far-reaching, its hard to imagine life's ocean ebb not drawing his name in the sand with every fresh tide.

SOWETO, For Futurists

First LOVE! Fat Albert & The Cosby Gang. How many of us knew then they were a motley crew from North Philly?

Khaya Mtshali. Courtesy, Another Africa. 

Arise Magazine Takes on Soweto. 

Am really inspired by the lovefest of talented creatives celebrating my beloved hometown-- SOWETO. I'm talking about cool cats' work, such as ilovesoweto and Sowearto and the just wrapped up TEDxSoweto. Listening to TEDxSoweto, I learned cool things about people i should know and admire, like def illustrator Khaya Mtshali, who tripped me out with his deep talk and left me with profound thoughts about the future, about happiness, about drawing and the art of living, "if the future is the present, you can't teleport to your ideal...there is no place you go to, to the future. It has to be here and now". His thesis on drawing and living in a state of happiness got me thinking about probably my first love affair with the kindda design that pulled me in and swallowed me whole--allowed me to imagine even my five year old me in an alternate superego self: as one of Fat Albert's impressive gang of Cosby Kids. Of course, the 70s fashion got me even then--I still have a thing for high collars and necklines/bottlenecks--but seeing cartoons a lot like me was powerful even if I couldn't articulate what it represented. In much the same way, seeing Soweto's design aesthetic celebrated today does things for me I cannot equate to words.