The Smartees are a group of young fashion designers from Soweto/Johannesburg who due to the lack of affordable brand name clothing have started to design their own stuff. Their style is usually described as a mixture of the European colonial chic and a traditional African clothing, although I guess that’s just a very limited description. The photographes below show the awesome work of a guy called Kepi Mngomezlu and have been taken by Jonty van Zeller, a young British photographer. Zeller has recently travelled to South Africa to organize fashion shootings with the Smartees for his dissertation. I also recommend checking out a little short film taken by Chris Saunders during the research for an article that will be published in the magazine’s South Africe special+++
