What Milli did next...

I've been quiet with good reason folks. For the past three days I've had the only-once-in-your-life experience of meeting and working with the editor of Dazed and Confused, Rod Stanley. He's in South Africa for a couple of days because D&C are doing a feature on SA for their June issue (yes because of the soccer but also because we're doing some cool things). Chris Saunders, Sandiso aka Blkseed and I have been showing him around and are writing a couple of stories for the magazine as a result.

One of Joburg's most photofantastic sons, Chris Saunders flew back from Italy, where he currently lives and works and he's been capturing the most awesome people and moments for this issue. We started on Thursday with an almost full day shoot with the Smarteez designers - Kepi, Floyd, Sibu and Thabo where they took us to their favourite fabric shopping spots in Market Street, downtown. Chris took some really special pictures and videos of them at different, sometimes compromising spots. I'm sure once these are out, they are gonna do even better than the initial pics that Chris took that are all over search engines when you type: Smarties or Smarteez!


Kepi, Floyd and Sibu in Newtown before we went to Market Street for their shoots.

My boys have grown from when I first met them two years ago. They are now designers and not just fabulous looking kids from Soweto. Kepi just finished shooting his first collection with another top English import, Jonathan van Zeller. Dazed is going to feature The Smarteez as the very fresh South African designers they are. I think the Stoned Cherrie/Sun Goddess phase in our sartorial identity 5 years ago has been succeeded by the Mandela's Kids aesthetic, which is what the Smarteez and all these other subgroups (AmaKipKip, Cream Cartel for example) represent. Love them or hate em, they've made it onto Dazed and Confused.

We also bumped into the Blk Jks (strangely being interviewed by Top Billing) and Rusty the graffiti artist, doing his thing in Newtown.


We bumped into the Blk Jks and this is me taking a pic of Tshepang while he was talking and the next pic is of Sibu's Georgie Zamdela hands.

On Friday, while some were thinking of a resurrected Jesus, we were out in the rain shooting Main Street Life and designers Black Coffee at their workshop at Arts on Main. We then had a very interesting initial interview turned group discussion with Thandiswa, who by the time she left, had the respect of 3 white boys, some of whom had never heard of her before today.

If you've spoken to me in the past couple of days, I've probably told you about Main Street Life. Arts on Main's cooler younger brother who is going to be born on 1 June 2010. i.e. it's a really cool apartment block that's being developed next to Arts on Main. We went to talk to Russell Grant, who is living there while they build the place and took a few shots, mostly from the rooftop which has neck-breaking views of Johazardousburg.

We then washed the day down with Gin Burgers, which by the way are not as good as the original Gin burgers.

Here are some more pics from the shoot on Thursday...there will be better ones on Chris' blog since he's the main pic man and on the Dazed Digital site.




Behind the scenes shots from the day

Oh, I've lost my camera so I've been taking pics from my phone hence the thumbsdown quality. I'll look for it after the long weekend!