South Africa: Street Style; Cool clothes with a conscience are winning new fans.(Cover Story)

Byline: Henk Rossouw

The architects of apartheid must be rolling in their graves: in May, the Voortrekker Monument, once the hallowed symbol of white supremacy, was lit up by camera flashes as models, black and white, strutted down a catwalk inside the great hall.

The cheek of holding a fashion show in the Voortrekker Monument--where boots, swastikas and khaki were once common--captures the sassy spirit of the new design scene that has emerged in South Africa since apartheid collapsed. "My clothing celebrates our identity," says director Nkhensani Manganyi, of the popular Stoned Cherrie label. "Our new sense of self, our new assertiveness."

Before 1994, says Dion Chang, a director of South African Fashion Week, chain stores would send scouts to London, Paris and New York, who would then return to South Africa and design almost exact imitations of what they'd seen. Now, he says, with an emerging black middle class creating a huge demand for fashion, South Africans are taking pride in local designers who have created their own authentic signature. In the last year, says Chang, staid chain stores have come onboard, ensuring that the designs shown in South African Fashion Week will make it into store windows.

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