Before South African designers had a stage, Lucilla Booyzen built one. In 1997, the former teacher and ex-model founded South African Fashion Week the only fashion hub of its kind on the continent at the time. Nearly three decades later, she’s still steering the platform that’s launched countless local careers.
Lucilla Booyzen grew up on a farm outside Pretoria, worked as a teacher, then got spotted by a modelling agency and by 1997 she’d launched South African Fashion Week. Two years later, SAFW hosted its first Black South African designers on the runway, a moment that changed the industry forever.
Some legacies are built one runway at a time. Lucilla Booyzen founded South African Fashion Week in 1997 with a simple mission give South African designers a platform to compete on a global stage. Over 25 years on, she’s mentored countless breakout designers and turned SAFW into the continent’s longest-running B2B fashion platform.
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From Runway Productions to South African Fashion Week, Lucilla Booyzen didn’t just join the industry, she built it. Nearly three decades later, her fingerprints are on almost every major SA design career that’s followed.
