Stitched for Success: Meet the self-taught Kayamandi designer eyeing the V&A and Europe

Luxolo Cakata’s victory in the 2013 Mr Kayamandi township pageant wasn’t all about his good looks.

He says his snappy dress sense set him apart, and planted the seed of business success.

After the pageant Cakata noticed how friends started approaching him for style advice: could he help make them a snappy dresser too? Could he help them design a winning outfit for the next Mr Kayamandi?

He could. 

More than a decade later, he’s still doing it, but now as a fully-fledged clothing designer with his own brand – LC Style Clothing. He also has his own design studio in the Kayamandi Corridor precinct on the outskirts of Stellenbosch, and was recently awarded seed funding from the Winelands Municipality to buy new machinery. 

None of this would have happened had Cakata the pageant model not recognised the business potential implicit in creating a powerful brand. “I was making a name for myself, and that’s when kids going to modelling pageants started coming to me,” he told Cape Chamber this week. 

At first he took his outfit ideas to local designers; then he decided to upskill and do it all himself. “I like local clothes. Kids would come to me and say, will you please dress us. And I would say ok I’m going to do this colour and this type of design.” 

“That’s where I saw the opportunity to start my own clothing brand in Kayamandi. I realised this is a gift I have: dressing people. I realised that is what I can do to progress myself”

There were still many hurdles to overcome. At the time he was working at a restaurant in Stellenbosch. He lost his mother in an accident in 2020, and resolved to honour her by making a business success. He purchased two machines, to work with product from suppliers, but realised he needed to do the sewing himself. “Suppliers would sometimes disappoint me, and I thought let me invest in learning how to sew. Using Youtube, I learnt how to sew and got better over time. I’m a self-taught fashion designer.”

Fast forward a few years and Cakata is about to turn 30. He has his own studio in the Kayamandi corridor, new machines from government’s Small Enterprise Development and Finance Agency (SEDFA), and now seed funding from the Winelands Municipality to purchase two more machines.

He also has his own distinctive local brand, which he hopes to export to the world. It shows a knobkerrie and a spear, a shield that protects the post-Apartheid Rainbow Nation, the national flag, and the blue and white of the isiXhosa people to represent his own tribal background.

“My two biggest dreams for my business are to have a shop at the V&A and to turn my brand into an international brand and have stores in some parts of Europe and Africa.”

“And to get married and have kids.”

But right now he’d be happy to expand to the Eikestad Mall in the Stellenbosch CBD.