Wanda Lephoto launches his first womenswear collection with Canvas Studios, exploring South African identity, beauty, memory and womanhood.
South African designer Wanda Lephoto is known for using fashion to explore identity, memory and the many ways Africa is represented. Now, he is taking that approach into new territory with his first womenswear collection, created with Canvas Studios.
The collection launches on 13 October, almost a year after Lephoto was named Changemaker of the Year at the 2025 Twyg Sustainable Fashion Awards. He also took home the Trans-seasonal Design Award that year.
While Lephoto’s work has largely focused on menswear, this collection gave him an opportunity to think about contemporary ideas of beauty, identity and womanhood from a different perspective.
The starting point was personal. Lephoto’s sister passed away in 1995 at the age of 10. That same year, she appeared in a fashion advertisement. For Lephoto, the image became connected to ideas of a new South Africa and a generation filled with hope and possibility.
More than 30 years later, that memory became a way to imagine the woman she might have become.
How might she have dressed? How might she have expressed herself? And what could her story say about how South African women are represented today?
“I don’t want to impose my thoughts on what women should look like,” says Lephoto. “So I’m making this collection from a viewpoint of learning from women what things should feel like and how they want to express themselves using clothing.”
That approach is reflected throughout the collection, which considers the South African woman as complex and varied rather than fitting her into a single idea of beauty or identity.
Lephoto draws on familiar prints, patterns and textures, reworking them through a contemporary lens. Heritage is present, but the collection is less interested in simply reproducing the past than in considering what can be created from it.
It is an approach that connects to the wider philosophy behind the Wanda Lephoto brand, which uses research, memory and storytelling to explore African identity and representation.
Sustainability is also part of that thinking. For Lephoto, it is not only about the materials used to make a garment. It also comes through local production, circularity, collaboration and the stories that give clothing meaning.
“I’m interested in this idea of ordinary people wearing everyday clothes that feel elevated and comfortable enough for them to still feel themselves in their skins,” – Wanda Lephoto.
That balance between considered design and everyday wearability is central to the collection. It also marks a shift for Lephoto, bringing his research driven approach into womenswear without losing the focus on identity and storytelling that has shaped his work.
The collaboration with Canvas Studios, Bash’s private label, grew from the relationship established through the Twyg awards. For Canvas Studios, the collection also creates a new platform for an independent South African designer and introduces his work to a wider audience.
“Wanda has an incredible ability to take stories that are deeply personal and make them feel universally relevant,” says David West, Head of Design for Canvas Studios. “This collection brings that perspective into a completely new space, while still feeling unmistakably Wanda.”
For Lephoto, the collection is ultimately about using fashion to ask questions about who we are and how we see ourselves.
“Wanda has an incredible ability to take stories that are deeply personal and make them feel universally relevant.”- David West, Head of Design for Canvas Studios.
His first womenswear collection does not attempt to define what a South African woman should look like. Instead, it starts with memory, research and listening, and leaves room for different experiences of beauty, identity and self expression.
- The Wanda Lephoto x Canvas Studios collection launches on 13 October 2026, exclusively on Bash.
- Shop the collection.
