THE “REPARATIONS” COLLECTIONT M . S S 2 0 2 5
In his most personal collection to date, Thebe Magugu turns his attention to familial estrangement, exploring the complicated relationship between himself and his father, whose roots lie in Malawi. Titled Reparations, the collection is an attempt to understand a relationship marked by distance, and the ways in which absence, resentment and the desire for reconciliation can coexist.
Drawing from his paternal heritage, Magugu looks to Malawi’s rich textile traditions, particularly the use of Chitenge cloth, as a starting point for the collection. These references are brought into conversation with the designer’s established vocabulary of precise tailoring, architectural silhouettes and intricate pleating. Traditional patterns and techniques are reinterpreted across oversized trapeze dresses, asymmetric suiting and layered garments, creating a visual language that moves between two countries and two sides of a personal history.
This collection comes from a very personal place. For a long time, my relationship with my father has been something I have struggled to make sense of, and I wanted to use the process of creating to better understand him, his history, and ultimately myself. I have been thinking about what reparations mean within a family, particularly when there are things that cannot necessarily be undone. Perhaps it begins with acknowledging what happened, and deciding what kind of relationship can exist beyond it.
Throughout the collection, South African and Malawian references sit alongside one another, reflecting the designer’s dual inheritance and the complexities of belonging to a history that has not always felt entirely accessible to him. The tension between structure and fluidity, symmetry and disruption, becomes a recurring consideration in the clothes themselves.
Reparations also expands on a question that has long informed Magugu’s practice: how clothing can preserve, interrogate and give form to histories that are often difficult to articulate. Here, that enquiry becomes especially intimate. The collection does not presume that reconciliation is simple, or even inevitable. Instead, it considers the possibility of approaching an inherited history with greater understanding, and what it might mean to begin again.
Shown at Paris Fashion Week with Creative Africa Nexus (CANEX)