Meet the Instagram-Sensation Design Duo Changing the Look of South African Fashion

Last week, an international crowd arrived in Johannesburg for the city’s biannual South African Fashion Week. By now, repeated guests of SAFW have surely begun to realize this is not the same Johannesburg from last season. Within the past six months, the city has hosted Africa’s first Afropunk Fest and welcomed a slew of new businesses and buildings to its trendy Maboneng neighborhood—ground zero for a new guard of designers, artists, activists, and musicians. Leading the charge are 25-year-old interior and fashion designers Shelley Mokoena and Keneilwe Mothoa, whose brand, Prime Obsession, offers a fresh twist on minimalism—and as a glance at their Instagram feed proves, they’re also their own best models and stylists.

Before Prime Obsession launched as a fashion brand in 2014, it was the name Mokoena and Mothoa chose for their shared social media presence. They began posting soon after they met as interior design students at the University of Johannesburg; the two had quickly bonded over their shared design interests and began to dress alike. They’d then snap themselves in settings ranging from industrial spaces to sprawling green lands, sporting crisp, two-piece ensembles cut in the same boxy shapes as their flat-top hairstyles. South African publications took notice, heralding them as beacons of Johannesburg’s evolving design scene. Brands took notice, too, and the duo was tapped for collaborations with the likes of Calvin Klein and Woolworths.

The most impressive thing about Mokoena and Mothoa’s initial success is that they managed to project a luxury image while wearing thrifted threads. “I think people were really attracted to the way we styled our clothing,” said Mokoena. Their collection, likewise, began as a series of one-off items from local thrift stores that the women revitalized themselves. “The whole idea was about not being able to afford expensive clothing, combined with our peers and lecturers always telling us we looked great and should start something,” says Mothoa.

Now, Mokoena and Mothoa plan to relaunch Prime Obsession later this year as a global contemporary brand, with improved fabrications at a sweet-spot price point (from $50 to $250). Even as the line transitions, Prime Obsession will maintain its core aesthetic of structured separates in neutral and solid hues, with the occasional ruffle and fringe embellishments. “We are very much influenced by architecture, structure, and balance,” says Mokoena. “It just plays back to the things that we studied. Even when you look at some of our clothes, they’re very minimal, but they also say something—they have levels.”

And while Prime Obsession 2.0’s products will soon reach a global market, Mokoena and Mothoa insist the label will continue to be a reflection of its local community—and its thriving new design culture. “It is important for a brand like ours to emerge in South Africa today because our brand is not only a business to us,” Mokoena says. “It is a part of our lives, something that we do even when we do not need to.”