F E AT U R E knew one would come. Then one day I was visiting a leather maker and there was a woman wearing springbok horns. She was a healer. I had never met a traditional healer before and guess what? I am going to see her tomorrow. I am really excited.” Hanneli grew up in the Cape. “It was a very happy childhood. We travelled quite a lot but not extensively. I got to see a lot of the low veld; my mom is from there. The natural and primordial beauty awes you. I was raised to appreciate beautiful environments from a young age but it’s only when I first went to London that I realised exactly how fortunate I was to have grown up where I did. The genesis of the Okapi can be traced back to the Karoo. I think the Karoo is one of the most special places in the whole of Africa. It encompasses all the subtleties of our country and is also part of the big picture of the whole continent. I think one tends to overlook the familiar. I couldn’t believe it when I discovered that a lot of the bags in the smart shops in London were made of ostrich skin. They might not have been of the best quality or style but they were made using a raw product from South Africa that was mostly overlooked at home.” I wanted to design something that would be classic and attractive to a very wide audience. I wanted each handbag to have the potential of becoming an heirloom, a piece that could be handed down. My greatest inspiration comes from nature and my work always has organic references like skin and horn. The bag has come full circle from veld to fashionable venue.”
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he bag, as a whole, was sourced and made locally. Even the string that ties it is made from mopani silk. “We are very lucky in Africa because we can easily trace the origins of what we make. We can tell the story and prove it. I think people were becoming jaundiced not knowing the true genesis of things; a bag sold in London might be manufactured in Shanghai with handles that were made in Hong Kong. Nowadays people don’t mind paying, but they want to know where things come from. The world has become so globalised. People care about origin but they also care about an individual voice. There is a lot in Africa that is authentic and not reproduced. We have to protect the Madein-Africa label ferociously.” And Hanneli Rupert is doing just that. Her Made-in-Africa Okapi bags are stocked only in Merchants on long and in the Singita Serengeti game lodge. ‘Maria Ramos bought one and we gave one to Michelle Obama and she said she really liked it.’ Adding to their exclusivity is the fact that there are no more than 10 in each range and you get a limited edition number.
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anneli has chosen to work with designers who all have the same sort of reckless talent she admires. Among them are Allen Schwartz, an architect and ecologist who is brave enough to live his dream. He founded the Mezimbite Forest Center in 1994 just after the civil war ended in Mozambique. In an area that was wrecked by slashand-burn operations, he now makes beautiful artefacts and parts for musical instruments out of hardwood. Gareth Cowden is another. He’s the mind behind the Babatunde styles with their liquorice-all-sorts colours. Then there’s Guidemore Chigama, a self-taught Zimbabwean who uses a mixture of ancient African trading beads and contempory artefacts like plastic hang tags to make interestingly different jewellery. Her genius is picking up on people’s uniqueness and bringing them together. She recently employed South African, Tammy Tinker who worked at Vogue in London for many years. Hanneli is confident that she has a great team. And with this knack for recognising talent, she always will. “In Africa the things might be beautiful but things have to be a hundred per cent perfect. We cannot allow carelessness to creep in and I do a lot of the packaging and presentation myself,’ she says. ‘There might be fascinating stories behind the pieces but that is not why I want them to be desirable. I want them to all be stand-alone pieces, beautiful in their own right.” Here, at the bottom of Long Street, among the souvenir shops, tinselly low rent boutiques, hamburger joints and tacky 70s commercial high rises, Merchants on Long represents a piece of authentic African turf. Its curvy belle epoque silhouette is home to rarities such as Madagascar chocolates, permanganatecoloured cotton dresses and obeisance glass beads. “There are shops in London like Dover Street Market that specialise in smart African products but we are the only ones in Africa doing the same thing. I do such a strict edit of what comes into the shop that if anyone wants to get the best things made in Africa they would be able to find them here.” In April Merchants on Long is doing a pop-up shop in London at Bluebird on King’s Road, “It’s exciting, only runs for one month and we have done collaborations with our top designers,” says Hanneli. ‘People underestimate the emerging African market. They assume we Africans are label-obsessed but we are really patriotic. Given the choice between a top African brand and another, we will go for the African brand.’ When asked if there pressures to succeed she simply answers, “I just think in life you have to try your hardest at whatever it is you are doing and real success is making the best of your individual strengths whatever they may be.”