How Joburg-based fashion brand Viviers hit reset with its current collection
“Beauty is what makes us get out of bed,” muses Lezanne Viviers, creative director of Viviers. “It is what makes our souls feel alive. It is what challenges us and it is a way for us to make sense of the world and reality we choose to create.” Her own search for beauty led to the founding of her eponymous brand in Joburg in 2019. Viviers offers limited-edition collections, made from vintage and dead-stock textiles, crafted by artisans who personally sign each piece. The brand challenges notions of luxury through its genderless, ageless and seasonless aesthetic. “It is a way to seek the truth, to understand oneself better, which embraces the offbeat, sometimes grotesque, sometimes decayed,” she says.
Her latest collection, Motherboard, references rewiring the connections between our mind and hearts – the body’s mainframe and the source of creativity. Viviers recently became a mother and her brand simultaneously outgrew its original showroom in her home, the mid-century Lotus House. The team moved to the Glasshouse – all clean lines and floor-to-ceiling windows – where Motherboard took shape.
“I have always been obsessed by creating beauty from elements that others consider to be trash”
The clothes, too, are a simultaneous rebooting. “It’s fun, because there are no rules,” she says. In this collection plastic is mixed with wool, silk, synthetics and repurposed scraps. She elevates plastic by manipulating it into a sublime, transparent A-line dress, and reuses e-waste collected from around Joburg in a comment on built-in obsolescence; a computer keyboard’s keys become jacket buttons spelling out the brand’s name. And actual computer motherboards are deconstructed into beading, collars and fastenings on woollen jackets and trousers. Similarly whimsical is a voluminous skirt transformed from a Ghana Must Go bag.
“I have always been obsessed by creating beauty from elements that others consider to be trash. I get a kick out of upcycling them, celebrating them as a status symbol,” Viviers says. Ultimately, it is this radical reworking of beauty that is most compelling - the fact that what at first seems redundant or useless can be elevated into beautiful pieces that can last a lifetime.
Photography Eva Losada
Styling Chloe Andrea Welgemoed
Hair Cellar Door
Make-up Tamaryn Pretorius
Models Thapelo Mofokeng at D1, Sue Suzy Suzanne at Fabulous,
Juliana at Boss, Gabe at Kult, Yuri George Pailman, Telvin Malu at Invade
Visit Viviers Studio
Published on 20/07/2022