Mdukatshani - Fifty Years of Beading

CHANGING FASHIONS Fifty years ago you could walk into a wholesaler like W.G. Brown and find an entire floor given over to beads. Browns had been in the business a long time and knew the colour conventions of each district in KwaZulu-Natal. Springvale women wore orange, yellow, green and black, Msinga women wore peacock colours with a little pink. At Springvale nobody ever pilfered blue beads – a horrible colour. At Msinga yellow and orange were viewed with distaste. We had been at Mdukatshani 35 years before orange started making an appearance in local head scarves – very daring. Soon it was everywhere, a pretty pale pumpkin that was changing conventions in an area where tradition remains strong. Fashion implies change. On the catwalks of Paris fashion is designed to last a season. At Msinga change is more gradual, alhough a stranger coming in would immediately notice the hairstyles. Smart, trendy, sophisticated – an obvious sign of the influence of the city on ideas. Ideas of who you are and who you could be, if only... Nothing speaks more to the aspirations of the young than the way they style their hair. Braided, tufted, plaited, combed, stretched, straightened, twisted, beaded, beribboned. Anyone can do it, and everyone does. It’s called isitayela , or swenka . You may live far from the city streets, but your hairstyle says you are fashionable.

Fifty years ago it cost ₤5 to have your hair put up in an isicholo , and “five bob” to have the ochre renewed. This rare photograph shows the work involved in a hairdo. Because the hospital objected to ochre on its pillows, a woman had to comb out her hair before she went to hospital to have a baby. Today a detachable isicholo costs R250.

Friends like to dress in similar outfits for special occasions, and the break-away use of orange, a new colour, says these young women are in the frontline of fashion.

Where once beads were only worn as amulets, today ornate beadwork is part of the ceremonies of worship of the Nazareth Baptist Church.

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Mdukatshani – Fifty Years of Beading