For the past few years, Pick n Pay Clothing has collaborated with emerging designers through its Futurewear Programme, an initiative that gives young designers a platform to showcase their collections to a larger audience and tap into the retail market space.

This season, the programme spotlights Lusindiso Lorde Ndlumbini, a 23-year-old designer from Cape Town, whose passion for fashion was fuelled by his mother after she convinced him to choose clothes over video games, which were his first love as he grew up an introverted child.

“I lived in a very quiet neighbourhood, so most of the time it was basically me in the house with my imagination and my games.

“One day, my mother took me shopping and I wanted to buy games but she wanted me to get clothes so I could look a certain way and have a bit more confidence in individuality, that’s what she was pushing for,”  Ndlumbini said.

“That day I had to choose between fashion and games. Eventually, I chose fashion. Ever since, I’ve been fond of fashion because, after that, I gained tremendous confidence in myself, I felt good, people started noticing me and I really love fashion for helping me be more of myself.”

When he was in high school, Ndlumbini and his friends decided to start a fashion label and call it House of Lordes.

However, along the way, his friends lost interest in the brand and that’s when his other friend, Bruce Carter, jumped in at the opportunity to work with him.

After high school, they both enrolled at The Fashion Institute of Garment Technology to further their studies but Ndlumbini later dropped out because he was not well inspired.

“It was a blast but it was also around Covid times, so everything had to be shut down. However, while I was there, I didn’t feel as inspired as I had anticipated.

“I thought I’d be surrounded by so many people who wanted to start luxury fashion brands or start brands and become global names, but most of them just wanted to work for big retailers or create patterns for already established brands.

“They didn’t want to create their things and I wasn’t attracted to that. I felt like my inspiration was being dimmed, so then I dropped out. After Covid, Bruce and I officially launched the brand and it’s been four years since,” he said.

This year, he came across the PnP Clothing Futurewear Programme through word of mouth and has learnt a lot being mentored by veteran designers Gavin Rajah and Julia Buchanan.

“I learned that I should take more time with my creations, apply more detail and think carefully about what I am doing.

“Even with the collection that we recently launched, at House of Lordes, we would usually focus on streetwear and high fashion but this collaboration with PnP Clothing, allowed us to be more versatile and stretch my design skills into traditional attire, which I’ve never dabbled into before this.

“Being able to create something new and everybody loved what we created, showed me that I have the power to create whatever we want, it’s just a matter of believing that we can do it,” said Ndlumbini.

After being placed outside his comfort zone and tasked to create a heritage collection, Ndlumbini thought of his mother, his heritage and his love for water bodies and created a collection based on that.

“When PnP Clothing gave me a brief that we had to create something for Heritage Month, the first thing I could think of was my mother. I’ve always admired her traditional style.

“The way she puts together clothes, the way she admires her heritage. With this collection, I wanted to create something for mothers and sisters. ‘Umoya Wamanzi’ is something that’s inspired by my very own Xhosa heritage and I used that title because there’s an essence of storytelling of Mamlambo (spiritual water bodies), the mermaids and the ocean, so those are the tones, the colours I could draw inspiration from- hence ‘Umoya Wamanzi’ is a combination of the blues, whites and the navy colours,” he explained.

In the foreseeable future, Ndlumbini wants to see his brand on the global stage, showcasing at international fashion weeks and being featured in the LVMP Prize like your Thebe Magugu, Lukhanyo Mdingi and Sindiso Khumalo.

∎ “Umoya Wamanzi” is available at 40 Pick ‘n Pay Clothing stores nationwide.