If Johannesburg is South Africa’s business heart, Cape Town, The Mother City, is its creative soul. The city, which is currently World Design Capital, is home to the country’s creative industries – film, animation, fashion, food and advertising. Its inhabitants are driving a creative prerogative from Africa with a global appeal.
Hanli Prinsloo and Hanneli Rupert are two Cape Townians who are making their voices heard on the world stage. In 2014, they were both named Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
FORBES WOMAN AFRICA brought Prinsloo and Rupert together for a joint photoshoot, a month before the WEF’s Meeting of the New Champions in Tianjin, China.
Rupert and Prinsloo are young, intelligent and excited about the difference that their businesses can make in sustaining an Africa of beauty and prosperity. Together, they embody the creative spirit of Cape Town and the fearlessness of the women of Africa.
Hanli Prinsloo
The Freediving Mermaid
When Hanli Prinsloo was a little girl, she dreamt about being a mermaid. Her oceans were the dams surrounding her parents’ horse farm on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. Her fishtail was her two feet – filthy from running around barefoot with her sister, Marieke.
“I was surrounded by animals, trees, fields and rivers, and we grew up to love nature. I was crazy, wild as a child – a complete tomboy. Our parents raised us to follow our dreams and we did,” says the 36-year-old Prinsloo.
These days, she lives in a small fishing village less than an hour outside of Cape Town. The ocean is at her disposal and her fishtail is a large state-of-the-art monofin. Apart from that, not much has changed. Prinsloo still dreams big.
The Blue Planet
The I Am Water Trust is an ocean conservation organization founded by Prinsloo in 2010, whose purpose is to educate and foster love for the ocean and all life forms that call it home. Few people will love something they don’t know and Prinsloo is on a drive to increase awareness about water by facilitating experiences out in the big blue. Much of the education is directed at previously-disadvantaged individuals who may not have access to the ocean’s beauty.
Prinsloo was inspired to create I Am Water after close to a decade spent in water as a competitive freediver and coach. For the uninitiated, freediving is a niche underwater diving practice which relies on the diver holding his or her breath until resurfacing. Prinsloo was first introduced to the sport when she was 20.
“When you go underwater you don’t talk, you look inwards and you just experience the ocean and the animal and plant life around you. For your mind, being underwater is a state of meditation or a state of no mind…maybe,” she says.
“When we go underwater together, we find a connection to each other. I first found that connection to myself and to others when I went underwater. It is the most quiet and peaceful experience.”
Prinsloo began competing and broke her first South Africa freediving record in 2003. A series of accolades followed and Prinsloo is now firmly placed in the freediving hall of fame. She teaches freediving and has coached various sportspeople – from surfers to rugby players – in the mental strength needed to hold your breath under water for close to six minutes.
“The more time I spent in the ocean, the more I wanted to protect it and share it with others. The first thing that unites us all is being in water,” says Prinsloo. The I Am Water Trust was founded with the help of the Ewing Trust Company.
Prinsloo’s other incarnations include documentary-maker and actress. At 19, she relocated to Gothenburg, Sweden, with little financial means, no language proficiency and zero friend or family contacts there.
“My family had traveled to Europe and I had loved the Scandinavian countries because the society is one that supports and celebrates art and creativity. Studies were free so I decided why not?”
Filming Africa For Sweden
“Looking back, I don’t know how my 19-year-old self did it. I learnt Swedish from scratch and supported myself entirely. I couldn’t do that again!” she says. Prinsloo studied towards a performing arts degree and project management and following a short stint as an actress, opened a small agency in Stockholm which specialized in making documentaries.
Prinsloo traveled through Africa putting together short documentaries and reports for Swedish television channels.
“There is so much news of despair coming out from Africa. I didn’t want to tell those stories. I wanted to tell stories of hope. I met people who had witnessed genocide and who loved life so much, that was the Africa I wanted to show to Europe.”
Her final long form documentary project was White as Blood – a story of a woman’s journey home to South Africa. A prophetic topic as Prinsloo soon found herself home for good.
Hanneli Rupert
The Art Aficionado
Hanneli Rupert is on a mission to showcase African opulence. Born in South Africa in 1984 but a citizen of the world, Rupert is looking beyond West-led definitions of high-end personal luxury and is creating bespoke items such as handbags and accessories while retaining the entire manufacturing value chain on the continent.
Rupert trained as a painter at the Wimbledon School of Art. Her first art exhibition, called Flesh Mandala’s, focused on the transient qualities of the human skin as depicted by anonymous human bodies.
“I looked at applying some of the more linear sides of my art work to fashion. I found I was designing things for myself – things like bags and necklaces – and people would ask me where they came from.”
Rupert was using organic elements in her designs, an application of a deep-seated fascination with the mystical and the anthropological dimension of Africa’s history. Elements such as raw hides, shells and animal bones were all curated with the purpose of evoking the clandestine romance of a pre-colonial unexplored Africa.
Athens To Africa
“At the time I was living in Athens and I wanted to come back to South Africa. I picked up on a demand for high-end goods from the continent – not just from overseas but from African customers as well. What I didn’t like was that luxury products were being designed and manufactured in established markets using our natural resources,” says Rupert.
“I wanted to do something to add to the value chain here at home.”
Back home in Cape Town in 2008, Rupert founded a luxury handbag line Okapi named after the ancient unicorn-like beast in African folklore.
“I wanted to use game skins on the bags. Game skins are not commonly used in fashion because the hide is imperfect; sometimes you can see scars from where the animal has been in a fight. I love that though, it has character and meaning.”
Rupert then began working with craft groups in and around the Western Cape to create charm add-ons for the handbags. There are detachable chains made from semi-precious African stones and agate, which can also double up as necklaces, as well as charms made from ostrich feathers and bones. The bags themselves are classic in line and the colors – a lot of tan, a lot of muted greens and reds – timeless. Rupert is decidedly not about fads but rather about lasting statement pieces.
“What’s really important to me is authenticity. The origin of the design needs to have meaning and it needs to be backed in history. This carries through to the sourcing of raw materials and the manufacture of the product.
“There is a symbolism in accessorizing, which transcends cultures and historical periods and that is really appealing to me. All humans accessorize to communicate a status. But adornments have become disposable these days and there are few jewelry items which still have meaning. I want the accessories I design and which I wear, to have meaning,”
she says.
The theory behind Okapi is right on the pulse of the current zeitgeist celebrating a mindfully-led curatorship of one’s material possessions. The springbok horn has become an emblem of sorts for the brand.
Rupert wears a black lacquered version swinging low off a chunky gold chain. She explains that Springbok horns were considered lucky in many ancient African cultures and thought to bring prosperity to those who wore them, hence why they can often be found hanging off an Okapi handbag.
Intelligent Fashion
The design ethos carries right through to Rupert’s personal style choices. She is very much about classic and simple but there is a vein of exoticism that runs through her edited preppy wardrobe.
“I love cross-referencing different design and style elements in the way I dress. There’s an intellectual approach to fashion which really excites me.”
Okapi handbags were initially sold online and in a number of stores in London and South Africa. Two years later, in 2010, the desire to create a platform to sell more African-sourced goods prompted Rupert to open her flagship store – Merchants on Long. True to type, the building itself is steeped in history having presided over more than a century of change in Cape Town’s city center.
The store has thrived and Rupert continues to search for ways to incorporate more African designs and more local production into her growing business.