There’s something fitting about Thebe Magugu returning to Woolworths almost a decade after their relationship began. In 2017, long before international awards, global stockists, and fashion-world acclaim followed, the South African designer was among the emerging talents given a platform through the retailer’s #StyleBySA initiative.
Nine years later, Thebe returns not as a designer on the rise, but as one of South Africa’s most internationally recognised fashion names. This time the partnership is bigger, extending beyond clothing into fragrance and unfolding across three drops. Appropriately, it also has a name that speaks to both where he’s come from and the stories that connect us: Lineage. “I’m so excited for people to see this range,” says Thebe.
Launched on 10 September to coincide with Heritage Month, the exclusive Woolworths collaboration explores the histories, traditions, and perspectives that shape South Africa. Rather than treating heritage as something fixed or nostalgic, Lineage considers how different visual languages and traditions can exist alongside one another.
The concept feels particularly suited to Thebe, whose work has often drawn on South African history, culture, and personal narratives while filtering them through a contemporary fashion vocabulary.
“Woolworths supported my work early in my career, so returning to the relationship in this way feels particularly meaningful,” he says. “With Lineage, we have been able to create a complete world across fashion and fragrance. The collection explores the beauty that emerges when different traditions and histories exist alongside one another, while inviting people to connect with those stories in their own way.”
That world will be revealed gradually. The collection spans womenswear and an exclusive signature fragrance, with three drops rolling out. Across both categories, Lineage brings together contrasting references to create a contemporary take on South African identity.
The addition of fragrance is significant. It allows Lineage to move beyond the purely visual and introduces another way of interpreting Thebe’s creative universe. Together, fashion and scent give the collaboration a dimension beyond the traditional fashion collection.
“Our relationship with Thebe began at an important stage in his journey, and it has been incredibly rewarding to witness the impact he has gone on to make both locally and internationally,” says Manie Maritz, CEO of Woolworths Fashion, Beauty and Home. “Lineage allows us to come together again in a far more expansive way, creating a collection that celebrates South African creativity, honours our diverse heritage and brings Thebe’s distinctive vision to our customers across fashion and beauty.”
The timing is deliberate. Lineage launches during a month devoted to considering South Africa’s cultural inheritance, but its message is less about looking backwards than recognising how heritage continues to evolve.
The collaboration also forms part of Woolworths’ Inclusive Justice Initiative, which seeks to create opportunities for local producers and broaden access and empowerment across the retail value chain. Partnering with South African creatives is one expression of that commitment, alongside support for the country’s own manufacturing industry.
There is a satisfying symmetry to Lineage. A platform that once introduced Woolworths customers to an emerging designer is now bringing his fully realised creative world to a much broader audience. For Thebe, it is a return to an early supporter. For Woolworths, it demonstrates what can happen when investment in local talent develops into a relationship rather than a moment.
And for shoppers, Lineage offers something more immediate: an opportunity to wear – and now even smell – a distinctly South African story.
Q&A with Thebe Magugu
YLA: How does it feel to be collaborating with Woolworths again?
Thebe: It’s incredibly full circle because my relationship with Woolworths predates Thebe Magugu as people know it today. After graduating, I interned at Woolworths, which was my first education in the realities of the fashion business – production, scale, how a product moves from an idea into something that can reach thousands of people. I then left to start my own label, and a few years later Woolworths returned to support me through #StyleBySA.
Coming back together now, almost a decade later, is special. So much has happened: winning the LVMH Prize, taking the brand global, collaborations with houses I deeply admire, and building Magugu House here at home. But the relationship with Woolworths existed before any of those accolades. Lineage isn’t really a new relationship but an overdue revisit.
YLA: How do you differentiate this project from the Thebe Magugu brand?
Thebe: The distinction was very intentional. Thebe Magugu is a luxury fashion house, and I approach it almost forensically. Collections can take quite dense subjects – history, politics, family, sociology – and translate them through fabrication, construction, research, and craft. There are pieces within the house that almost function as documents or artefacts, and focus on my point of view. With Lineage, I wanted something that translates these subjects through the scale and accessibility of Woolworths. Having its own identity and logo allows the line to exist in its own right.
YLA: What can customers expect from the capsule collection?
Thebe: There are vivid, almost hand-drawn interpretations of the South African landscape and references to our joint heritage, but they’re deliberately abstract. I didn’t want someone to look at a motif and be told exactly what it means. I wanted people to recognise fragments of their own memories in it.
Some scenes feel incredibly familiar – travelling home over Christmas, the colours of traditional dress, the intensity of a South African sunset. Those references are there, but they’ve been distorted and reassembled into something contemporary.
That idea of contrast runs throughout Lineage: restraint against exuberance, tradition against modernity, structure against fluidity. South Africa itself is full of those contradictions, and they give us such an interesting visual language.
