It’s early on a Friday morning and there’s a flurry of activity at The White House in Bryanston. Crew members intermingle with hurried creatives as they sort out the inner workings of the Don Julio photoshoot for the launch of the Por Amor (For Love) Artist Residency. YourLuxury Africa is part of the mix of teams making their way in and out of the expansive mansion to shoot the October cover story.
Upstairs in the dressing room, London-based jazz and Afrobeat group Kokoroko is blaring on a small speaker. Downstairs, Amapiano musician Kelvin Momo is having his hair expertly and meticulously trimmed by his barber. As the cool Joburg morning air warms, the shoot comes to life with a few vignettes starting to take shape.
In one scene, a model has her face draped in a tremendously large custom Crystal Birch straw hat. In another vignette, photographer and artist Imraan Christian is bathed in iridescent light as he paints blue hues on a canvas which are reminiscent of the Blanco agave plant used for Don Julio Blanco. Down the corridor, stylist Kay Kay Ribane thoughtfully adjusts classic denim silhouettes on a male model.
We have chosen people that are not led by commercialism; people who do what they do because they love it”. And this is because Don Julio is a brand that inspires you to follow your heart.
The Por Amor campaign is a global one curated to promote the brand’s ‘for love’ message, upheld by its late founder, Don Julio González. Linked to the campaign is an artistic residency devised to strengthen ties between Mexico and South Africa, with the creatives returning to share their unique experiences with us.
The campaign has already kicked off in Mexico, New York, and Singapore and hopes to find synergies between a contemporary Mexican and African client base through a creatively-led project.
The Por Amor South African cohort includes four well-established creatives. Renowned milliner Crystal Birch, textile and fashion designer Lukhanyo Mdingi, as well as Kelvin Momo and Imraan Christian make up the collective that will be visiting Mexico for collaborative projects with complimentary Mexican peers and creatives to create a new and distinct body of work.
In another room, Lukhanyo starts off introspectively about his role in the campaign. He asks, “How can I use the medium of design to bring a sense of integrity of what collaboration essentially looks like?” He continues to signal his curiosity “about the understandings of the artisanal sensibilities of [his] craft and the honesty that is woven into the fabric [of what he does]”.
Collaboration is an important principle for Lukhanyo, not only in this residency but also in his general outlook as a fashion designer.
I love collaboration more than anything else. I love human ingenuity and hearing the different perspectives and points of view of people that enrich my inspirations. Being in the presence of those who specifically focus on the provenance of craft is something that has really inspired me in such a way that I’ve added that sensibility into my point of view and design.”
Lukhanyo and Crystal share the reticence of being in front of the camera, but as the day continues, any feelings of trepidation are quickly calmed by the multiple, experienced creative hands at the helm. “Being in front of the camera is something I don’t usually do. I’m usually behind creative direction and styling, but I think this is an opportunity for people to get to know me a little bit more,” reflects Lukhanyo.
Chief among these creatives is Imraan who dons the hat of creative director, director, and ‘talent’ as part of the Por Amor residency. Ruminating on the value and importance of the cohort, Imraan says, “The most exciting thing about this project is that we are all experienced craftsmen and we all value craft over notoriety.” Imraan notes that he is interested in the knowledge systems inherent in Mexican culture. “I’ve read a lot, and the knowledge systems in Mexico are deeply connected to us. I think that the connections between their coast and our coast are intrinsic to how we all understand and relate to each other,” he adds, reflecting on the collectives’ upcoming artist residency.
Kelvin’s joyful energy is infectious on set. Speaking about his musical role in Por Amor, he notes his excitement and slight anxiety for the upcoming project.
This residency will take me out of my comfort zone, and will be a huge source of inspiration because it will enable me to work with a whole range of different people.”
The musician has honed and pioneered a new and artistic sound in the realm of amapiano music ,which is comically referred to as ‘private school amapiano’. This sound emerged as a result of his interest in fusion, RnB, and soul along with his father’s eclectic musical catalogue. “My dad would bring out a different cassette tape for different guests and I always used to wonder how the producers [of that music] made music that people would enjoy and dance to,” he says. “I started listening to a bunch of my dad’s soulful records and paired that with an interest in deep house, funk house, and soulful house, and it was from there that I came up with private school piano.” This curious approach to his craft will likely make for an interesting sonic collaboration between Kelvin and a contemporary Mexican artist.
For Crystal, the residency offers a unique opportunity for play. “I’m not only inspired by milliners across the world, but I’m actually inspired by everything other than fashion. It can be interiors, stories, and interesting textures,” she says. She’s flirting with the idea of abstracting ideas of normalcy to give way to pleasure and fun through her custom designs in Mexico.
For this project, Crystal is interested in Mad Hatters’ tea parties and the sense of joy and playfulness imbued within them. With a “play on tea-quila”, she says, “I might even blow out the Don Julio bottles with glass blowers into teapots.”
“We’ve chosen people that are not led by commercialism; people who do what they do because they love it and they are in their own lane,” reflects Theo Zulu, Senior Brand Manager for Don Julio in South and Central Africa. Emphasising how love is the central theme of the campaign, Zulu explains, “The ambition for Don Julio is to be the first luxury icon from Mexico, similar to what champagne is for France or similar to what scotch is for Scotland, and as this global expansion happens for Don Julio, the brand is growing all over the world. What was important for us as a creative team was to land Mexico in a way that an African consumer understands it which gave us the correlation between African talent and Mexican talent on this campaign.”
From jazz to fashion, the exchange of creative endeavours has formed part of the tapestry of the global artistic landscape. For these four South Africans, inspiration is synonymous with – and the root of – love.
