There is a great article in September’s Elle Magazine on South Africa’s new black fashion kids, making a parallel between the show-off style taking off in the townships/urban streets with the Japanese Harajuku street style trend. The piece calls these kids Smarteez: brown on the inside, multicoloured on the outside and points us to the work of Nontsikelelo “lolo” Veloko who documents SA street style (amongst other things). The photos above are from her exhibition last year at the Goodman Gallery and some earlier work.
See also Radical, Fashionable, Beautiful from Fairlady Magazine’s blog and Arthrob












4 comments
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October 20, 2008 at 3:01 am
wayneandwax.com » links for 2008-10-19
[...] South Africa’s “Harajuku” kids « global flaneurs unite! (h/t birdseed) (tags: southafrica fashion urban cosmopolitan race nation blogpost) [...]
October 28, 2008 at 4:15 am
adorability
I love love their style! Love it! Love it! Love it! I just got superbly inspired!
November 3, 2008 at 9:35 pm
nnontsikelelo “lolo” veleko: beauty is in the eyes of a beholder | bits and bobbins
[...] and let me know how it was, if you don’t mind!) -according to south african street style, south africa’s version of elle deems the sartorially savvy street-sourced style-mavens of joha… (like the ones depicted in veleko’s body of work) “’smarteez’: brown on the [...]
November 6, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Kepi Mngomezulu
The future is ours, even today in it’s essence is ours, we are smart dressers exuse the pun but it’s a whole lot more than meets the eye. I would prefer Smarteez not to be called ‘South African Harajuku kid’ but rather the worlds Smarteez!!