8 Inspiring
South African Women on Power, Beauty and Creative Careers in a Series by
Between 10and5 for Bobbi Brown’s #PrettyPowerful Initiative.
Pretty Powerful is a global initiative by Bobbi Brown
Cosmetics which aims to support programmes that empower and educate women and
girls in developing countries through the sale of limited edition products
which change annually. This year (2014) the Pretty Powerful product is a
limited edition mascara, one-hundred percent of the proceeds from which will be
donated to Smart Works in the U.K. , The Open Closet in Korea, the Girl Rising
Fund in the U.S. and Heartbeat in South Africa.
Heartbeat Centre for Community Development is an NGO that
focuses on providing educational, material, health and social services to
orphans and vulnerable children to ensure they reach their full
potential.
To further spread the message of this important project in
South Africa, Bobbi Brown Cosmetics approached creative showcase website
Between 10and5 to produce and host a content series supporting the initiative.
To do this Between 10and5 identified 8 inspiring women who have made a definite
mark in their various creative industries and interviewed them about power,
beauty and their roles as entrepreneurs and artists.
Creating content for a brand that’s dedicated to the
empowerment of women and girls around the world, and for a campaign that
celebrates powerful women, Between 10and5 decided to recruit an all women team
to make it happen. Over two days the Pretty Powerful team visited two cities –
Johannesburg and Cape Town (with one stop in Stellenbosch) – to photograph the
eight featured women and film the process.
The women
are:
Anisa Mpungwe is the Tanzanian-born, Johannesburg-based
fashion designer behind her own label Loin Cloth & Ashes, created to give
women an alternative to the Little Black Dress. The proudly African womenswear
brand was established after Anisa was announced the winner of the ELLE New
Talent Design Award in association with Mr Price back in 2008. She has since
returned to join the judging panel offering her advice to those following in
her footsteps. In 2010 Anisa showed at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week New York as
part of the Arise Magazine Collective. Two years later in 2012, she opened her
first flagship store in Maboneng. Last year Anisa launched an exclusive
project range with Mr Price and has recently announced a follow up
collaboration with the fashion retailer which launched on the 23rd of October.
Loin Cloth & Ashes is focused on clothing that complements the female
form. Inspired by art, music, colour, shape, and Africa, Anisa designs for
women who, like her, are powerful, confident and independent.
Kirsten Sims is an illustrator based in Stellenbosch
painting charming scenes in which her signature, long-limbed, offbeat
characters go swimming, visit a circus, site-see or throw lavish dinner parties
and picnics that you wish you could attend. Recently Kirsten collaborated with
Anthropologie on an illustrated 2015 calendar and created the cover for the
summer issue of Ecotone journal. Currently, she is working on a children’s
book about a polar bear called Henry. In addition to her freelance career,
Kirsten exhibits work, teaches illustration to high school students, and is
completing her Honours degree in Illustration at Stellenbosch University.
South African actress Zakeeya Patel’s grandmother was the
first distributor of Indian films in South Africa, no doubt attributing to her
love for telling stories. Known for her television roles on M-Net’s The Wild and SABC3’s drama series High Rollers, Zakeeya has also acted in
a number of films, highlights being Closing
Act (directed by Layla Swart), Painting
Water(directed by Kyle Davy) and Material
(directed by Craig Freimond). Zakeeya’s name has graced many a
programme, having appeared in theatre productions across the country including Locked, The Colonel Bird and The Black and White (Arena Theatre);Othello at the Baxter Theatre; A Style of the Eye at The Playroom; Vessel at the Rehearsal Studio; Qaphela Caesar at Hiddingh Hall; Wintertime at the Roofers Theatre; and Click-x-cessand Suitcase Stories at the Grahamstown Festival. Most recently she
co-starred in a local adaption of Eve Ensler’s award-winning play Emotional Creature: the secret life of girls
around the world earlier this year.
Chef Vanessa Marx is the co-creator of Cape Town
restaurant Dear Me, The White Room one level up, and top floor bar Tjing Tjing.
After graduating at the Institute of Culinary Arts in the Cape Winelands
Vanessa apprenticed with Pete Goffe-Wood, who you’ll know from MasterChef SA,
before working in the south of France, Zurich and London. Vanessa’s love
for working with fresh, simple and seasonal ingredients as head chef at Dear Me
saw her receive the first ever Eat Out Rising Star Award last year. She
attributes the inspiration behind her menus to people, places and seasons,
“people like the women in my life, and the chefs whose kitchens I have worked
in. Places I have seen and places I dream of seeing.”
At just twenty two years old Vuyiswa Mutshekwane, or Vie
for short, opened Joburg based fashion boutique TwentyTwo stocking up and
coming South African design labels and vintage pieces that were difficult to
find anywhere else. Her monthly ‘Fashion Fridays’ at the store were her first
foray into throwing must-attend events for the art, music and fashion crowd.
Today, together with The Other Girls – a dynamic group of Johannesburg women
and friends – Vie is behind the wildly successful The WKND Social, events that
are all about the bringing together of good food, good music and good people.
Still working in fashion, Vie is currently the sales and marketing manager at
Kisua, an exciting e-commerce site offering exclusive contemporary African
fashion by the continent’s best and brightest design talent.
A trained artist, Katherine-Mary Pichulik studied at
Michaelis majoring in printmaking. Her destined path revealed another direction
however, one that she found via qualifying as a pastry chef and travelling
abroad, most significantly to India where the beginnings of her accessory brand
took place on a 36 hour train ride. Under her self-titled brand Pichulik,
Katherine-Mary creates bold accessories for bolder women, inspired by
the intimate relationship women have with their jewellery; precious
belongings that speak of their travels, their mothers or grandmothers or the
people they have loved. Since establishing Pichulik in mid-2012, the brand has
grown to include collaborations with Missibaba, Laslesso, Stefania Morland,
Loin Cloth & Ashes, Alexis Barrell, Taibo Bacar and most recently Kat
van Duinen. This year Katherine-Mary was named the Businesswomen’s Association
of South Africa’s Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year and African Fashion
International Accessory Designer of the year.
Zanele Kumalo is the current Content Editor at The
Publishing Partnership, a company producing engaging content for targeted
audiences across both print and digital platforms. Her previous experience
reads like a list of publishing dream jobs, having worked as a Features Editor
at Marie Claire and a Beauty Editor at Marie Claire, ELLE, O Magazine and Top
Billing magazine. Before focussing on beauty, Zanele worked as a reporter at
the Sunday Times. Equally obsessed with music as she is with words, it’s not
unusual to find Zanele behind the decks at an event.
Lara Adine Lipschitz grew up on our television screens as
one of the enthusiastic presenters of SABC 1’s interactive kids show YoTV.
After school Lara attended Wits University to study drama where she focused on
acting, physical theatre and musical theatre. Her first stage production
as a professional actress was her own one-woman show, an adaptation of My Uncle Oswald. Her most recent role
was in the local adaption of Emotional
Creature: the secret life of girls around the world, an award-winning play
by Eve Ensler – perhaps best known for The
Vagina Monologues. Also a talented writer, 10 months ago Lara launched her own webseries called Chin Up!, a mockumentary based on her
real life experiences (the hilarious, the hopeful and plain awful) as an
actress in Johannesburg.
The resulting content series includes 8 interviews,
photographs and 4 videos.
Find the more at http://10and5.com/tag/bobbi-brown-pretty-powerful/.
VIDEOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt_3Yw7Ff3o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i514j82BAKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eisaVt4lLg
CREDITS:
Between 10and5 // www.10and5.com
Photography: Amy Scheepers
Styling: Raya Rossi, Lee-Ann Orton
Make-up: Smangele Mahlangu, Dene Booysens , Alicia
Schutte, Nicole Taljaard and Aneeqah Martin - all
at Bobbi Brown
Videos: Helen Raine and Faheema Hendricks // Motion City
Films
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