SAFW AW23 COLLECTIONS | OPPO BLACK COFFEE

Black Coffee is the label of South African designer Jacques van der Watt. Black Coffee is distinctive for the way it blurs fabrication and fashion. The sharp structural designs are characterised by complex, layered shapes that yield a fastidious fashion sensibility that is at once restrained and bold. The design goes beyond adornment, often melding the body with the pattern in a meticulous feat of engineering. It renders fabric in relief, its carved features projected from the surface, marking the body so that skin is brought to prominence and embossed with fabric. Despite its exacting geometry it remains subdued with utterly feminine traits like fine pleating and intricate ribbon trimmings so that the garments are right for work wear yet strikingly befitting of evening wear too. Jacques van der Watt is a master of discreet style that refines craft, embellishing on traditions like millinery and applique and echoing African motifs but with a modern verve. Jacques is one of the pioneers of fashion in South Africa, heralding fashion as a standalone industry at a time when it was restricted to occasion-specific garments. He was one of the initially unknown brands that collaborated in South African Fashion Week in 1999 that originated fashion as an art form in this country. The label soon gained attention and Black Coffee has shown at South African, Cape Town, San Francisco, Berlin, and New York Fashion Weeks. It has been nominated five times for the SA Fashion Awards and has w