The Afrocentric way of life label, co-founded by TV host Selema Masekela, opens on Abbot Kinney for 4 months, providing beachwear and surfboards impressed by motifs and proverbs from throughout the continent.
African surf model Mami Wata has only a debuted 4-month-long pop-up store in Venice.
Co-founder Selema Masekela — a TV host (Vice World of Sports activities), sports activities commentator and producer — had lengthy dreamed of making a surf model reflective of African individuals.
Reduce to 2017 when a buddy linked him with guys doing simply that in Cape City, the place he was supporting his acclaimed trumpeter father, Hugh Masekela, via most cancers remedy.
“I used to be actually, actually blown away,” remembers Masekela, who joined up with Mami Wata, named for the normal African water spirit, to assist unfold the message of his late activist father, generally known as the daddy of South African jazz and for his anti-apartheid songs together with “Soweto Blues.”
“Earlier than my father handed the largest message he was making an attempt to share with the world and in addition with Africans was to take satisfaction within the marvel of the nation and the variety of the continent, the depth of the tradition and the immense methods by which creatively — via music, meals and style — Africa is contributing to the zeitgeist,” he says.
The label, riffing on motifs, iconography, animism and proverbs from throughout the African continent, was a approach for Masekela to choose up the elder Masekela’s mantle and stoke curiosity within the West.
Mami Wata’s energy — as anybody strolling by the pop-up’s unmissable big yellow banana on a area of tomato-red cube will see — is its capability to “showcase fashionable African design in a approach you possibly can’t ignore,” says Masekela of the exuberant, feel-good garments, together with cut-and-sew shirts, board shorts, tees and sweatshirts.
“The design will get individuals speaking, then they study it’s from South Africa, and it’s a portal into this a lot greater story.”
One other path to enlightenment is Afrosurf, a ebook Mami Wata’s co-founders compiled throughout COVID, funded by Kickstarter. A “visible mindbomb,” says Masekela, it’s crammed with pictures, essays, poems, playlists and illustrations by African surfers and creatives that solely scratch the floor of the continent’s expertise. It’s been picked up by Penguin Random Home and Ten Pace Press, and Masekela is at the moment buying a sequence primarily based round it. Proceeds from the coffee-table tome profit Waves for Change and Surfers Not Road Kids, two South African nonprofits utilizing surf remedy to assist underserved and at-risk youth. “Yeah, this can be a cool, entertaining way of life,” says Masekela of browsing, “but it surely’s additionally a lifesaver.”
Of their passionate try to develop what surf tradition seems like globally, the Mami Wata group has additionally produced a transportive quick movie, shot by Big Movie and artwork directed by Mami Wata co-founder Peet Pienaar in Senegal throughout Masekela’s most up-to-date surf journey on the continent. He describes it as “an artwork piece that forces you to go, ‘Whoa, I’ve by no means seen that earlier than!’ You get the texture of what it may be prefer to be within the streets and the ocean of Senegal.”
There, Masekela savored being within the lineup of world-class waves with surfers who seem like him. “Ninety-five % of the youngsters within the water are literally Senegalese,” he says, “they usually’re making their very own surf tradition.” One which’s in stark distinction to the Southern Californian blonde-hair, blue-eyed trope. The message is: You don’t must seem like that to surf.
That theme can also be carried out in Mami Wati’s Spring/Summer season 2020 assortment look ebook, shot by famend South African portrait artist Pieter Hugo in wildly vibrant style.
There’s a necessity, he says, to get “individuals to see Africa not as a spot that wants our assist, however as a continent that has a lot to provide and share in how we reside as human beings.” And with its daring, inventive collections, genuine storytelling and spirited angle, Mami Wata is amplifying that discovery. “To me,” says Masekela, “Mami Wata celebrates being alive.”
1508 Abbot Kinney Blvd., mamiwatasurf.com
A model of this story first appeared within the March 30 subject of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.