HOT LUNCH | Craig Jacobs hasn’t finished with fashion

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I cast my eye north and had an epiphany — I really should take my neighbour to lunch. By which I mean the ever charming and professional party attendee Craig Jacobs, whose column is directly above

We share a page, we should break bread. The problem is that a) I worry he might be secretly judging my fit; and b) between us, we possess a rather alarming archive of things people might prefer forgotten, which may derail our focus

We meet at MYLK in Greenside for avocado toast. Its slogan is Eat Play Love, and I confess that I may in fact come perilously close to the Eat, Pray, Love cliché on my personal trajectory. Jacobs laughs. Reinvention is something he knows about

Born in Durban, he grew up on the Cape Flats before his family emigrated to Australia when he was 15. At Holy Trinity primary school his always re

“I was laughed at a bit at school for having a homemade pencil case,” he says. But his spirit was strong and so was his social drive, even as a young boy who organised a drive to get classmates to clear litter from their surrounds. He still wonders where he got the idea, but it was an initiative that took him all the way to meet Cape Town’s mayor

In Sydney he studied media and sociology, wrote for a free newspaper, worked in a supermarket deli and became an extra on Heartbreak High

“I was sitting in the back of the class doing my university readings while I was getting paid to appear on an Australian soapie.”

He found the Australian culture of open-minded thinking for yourself formative. And his innate energy drove him to a constant rotating cast of multiple interests and fresh endeavours. He tells me his first fashion assignment at Cream magazine in Sydney introduced him to designer Akira Isogawa, who was questioning gendered clothing and fashion seasons back in the 1990s. But he imagined that a stint at home would be good for his CV.

I did a deep dive into Venda culture, came across this amazing mythological place called Lake Fundudzi, where they believe you can hear their ancestors drumming underneath the water at night, and I thought that is a story I’m going to tell, but through clothing

—  Craig Jacobs

In 1998 a three-month contract brought him to the Sunday Times. And then he was poached by Media24 for his innate ability to spot a celebrity scoop. But his magpie eye prompted him to establish his creative agency Stylist A, determined to open doors for black stylists and makeup artists. His fashion label, Fundudzi, emerged from an interview with musician Thandiswa Mazwai, who described dressing in garments from different African cultures.

“I did a deep dive into Venda culture, came across this amazing mythological place called Lake Fundudzi, where they believe you can hear their ancestors drumming underneath the water at night, and I thought that is a story I’m going to tell, but through clothing.”

He approaches his A-Listers society column with much the same curiosity

“I almost think I’m a little bit like an archaeologist or a documenter of things. I’m fascinated by people. I actually studied media and sociology at university, so I’m really interested in what things mean. Yes, we talk about clothes and about people, but what we’re really doing is recording a little piece of history.”

He learnt the society beat under the formidable Gwen Gill, when glamorous parties still made newspaper pages. I wonder how the best has changed and we ponder the rise of the influencer brigade

“Today a celebrity arrives with an entourage. They come with the photographer, sometimes with the stylist. They have their phone brandished around, so they don’t pay attention to things.”

And he thinks people are putting less effort into parties and events. His eyes glaze over remembering the undisputed king of the party, Sol Kerzner, flying journalists to Dubai for the opening of Atlantis, where Jacobs drank tequila with Wesley Snipes and encountered Shirley Bassey and the Olsen twins

“Today people dress for pictures as opposed to quality,” he says. “The clothes for me are the biggest concern, because we’ve changed the value of how we look at clothing.”

His German great-grandmother was a dressmaker with a studio in Durban’s Grey Street. She spent three months taking orders and nine months making the clothes

“Those high society ladies waited because they needed them for the new season. And you valued the clothing. There was good quality clothing that you kept and you wore and you handed on, even to your children. And we don’t do that anymore because the clothes are so threadbare and horrible after you’ve worn them a few times that you’re going to throw them away.”

Disillusioned with the fashion system, Jacobs withdrew from South African Fashion Week a decade ago. But he has found a new way to engage with his passion and is showing again at the event in Hyde Park this week. In his first collection in this new phase — reimagined pieces from the Funduzi archive — he will show repurposed garments, including second-hand clothing shipped to Africa from Europe.

“We went to Ghana, the mountains of second-hand clothing dumped there from Europe … My thing is, there is an abundance of second- hand clothing, right? All clogging up Africa. So let me use that as a re

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