Storytelling meets sustainability: Khumo Morojele
Khumo Morojele is a self-taught designer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Morojele developed an early appreciation for sustainable fashion when he was introduced to thrifting by his mother, who owned a Turkish womenswear boutique. The two would go thrifting in Johannesburg’s CBD, a fond experience that led to Morojele creating upcycled pieces, embedding sustainability into his design ethos.
“That whole foundation and circulation of clothing — around friends, family and design — is what I love most about my relationship with fashion,” Morojele says. “My mom introduced me to thrifting in town when I was younger and having that interaction and way of bonding with her made me love clothing even more. From there I realised that I could do my own thing. I had to make do with what I had that ties into sustainability. Making something beautiful out of nothing has always been part of how Black people have made life and culture throughout history, and the celebration of Black people and their experiences through fashion is an extremely important part of my artistic approach.”
In 2022, Morojele’s work gained significant recognition in the British Council-sponsored Design Futures Lab — a sustainable digital fashion workshop exploring the intersection of fashion and extended reality (XR) through new creative technologies. A year later, Morojele was selected as part of the Design Indaba Emerging Creatives Class, a program that identifies and elevates budding South African talent, highlighting his innovative approach to sustainable fashion and his commitment to redefining the industry through cultural storytelling inspired by the city he lives, Johannesburg.
One of Morojele’s notable projects is “Dunusa: Life of a Garment,” a collaboration with designers Klein Muis and Jack Markovitz, focusing on deconstructing and upcycling second-hand clothing sourced from Johannesburg’s open-air, Dunusa street market, where many discarded garments originate from European exports.
