Cape Town-based House of Lucent designer Laura Ferreira’s journey to develop her latest collection which debuted at the virtual South African Fashion Week (SAFW) in October 2020, began a year prior, in October 2019, when she saw a video of the Christian Dior Resort 2020 show. What caught her attention was a piece made of hand-woven wool. She would later find out that the fabric was made by a small group of women in a remote village in Morocco, working with a facilitator by the name of Guillaume Thiebaut, co-founder of Memòri Studio, a French-based company that works to preserve and apply artisanal crafts from the region. “I thought to myself, let me try and see if I can actually get a hold of the facilitator, and try to go there and see I could maybe create with these women,” says Ferreira.

Early 2020, pre-lockdown, she made her way to Morocco to meet the women, who are of the Berber tribe, based in a landlocked village in the Anti-Atlas region of Southern Morocco. “The village was 400 kilometres outside of the capital, Marrakech. We had to find our own transport to get there because it was so rural and really in the middle of nowhere,” she adds. Throughout the two weeks she spent working with them, communication was three-way affair. She would speak English to Thiebaut, who would then speak to a translator in French, and the translator would convey the message in Berber to the artisans.

House of Lucent designer Laura Ferreira together with translator Najim, and  one of the artisans. Photo by Laura Ferreira

House of Lucent designer Laura Ferreira poses with the artisans. Photo supplied by Laura Ferreira

“Working with them was a beautiful experience, I learnt so much. We worked with wool from a rare breed of sheep called the Sirwa, which are indigenous to Morocco. They hand-spun the wool before weaving it by hand, and then used natural pigment to create the beautiful colours. For example, we would eat pomegranates, and then dry the husk in the sun, before grinding it to make the pigment,” she explains.

House of Lucent SAFW 2020 runway images. Photo by Eunice Driver for SAFW

“They were a bit taken aback that this outsider from South Africa found what they were doing so amazing that they would travel so far to meet and work with them; because their great great great grandmothers had passed on these skills generation after generation, for their own weddings and ceremonies. They didn’t view it as something particularly fashionable.”

Out of that journey came the standout woollen pieces of Ferreira’s collection, and once back home, she would build on it for her collection. Being an avid nature enthusiast, she looked to nature for inspiration. “It’s inspired by the African sunset and sunrise. That is why I called it Aurora, because in Greco-Roman mythology, Aurora is the personification of the break of dawn. She was believed to come across the night sky and bring in the light with her angels, which is actually quite fitting because Lucent, the name of my brand, actually means ‘glowing or giving off light’,” she explains.

“I wanted the viewer to feel as though they were experiencing a sunset. Every day I would watch the sunrise and the sunset, and I started noting the colours and their order. That’s why you’ll see the running order of the collection is meant to be as though you’re looking at a sunset. First the browns and the sands and reds from the earth, then there’s pops of whites which are the clouds, then yellows and the bright reds you sometimes see at sunset.”

House of Lucent SAFW 2020 runway images. Photo by Eunice Driver for SAFW

The show is her second at SAWF, since founding her label in 2018, some five years after completing fashion school. “I’ve always known I wanted to start my own business,” says Ferreira, “It’s been a journey, an adventure. After fashion school, I worked as a store manager; I knew that I needed the experience in order to get to where I am today. I think an understanding of retail is critical in the industry. And then once I had obtained enough experience, I went into media. I worked a bit with Grazia magazine, and then my final job before starting the House of Lucent was in an apparel manufacturing factory in Cape Town, which was a great place to learn about quality, production, fabrics, pricing and design. I was there for about two years, and once I felt quite happy and confident to move on to the next step, that’s when I started Lucent, a day before my 25th birthday in July 2018.”

Moroccan landscape. Photo by Laura Ferreira

A little over a year later, in 2019, she won SAFW’s New Talent Search award, in part due to her brand’s sustainability-focused approach, which Ferreira also sees as an ongoing journey of learning: “Sustainability is absolutely our key focus, but we weren’t a sustainable brand from the beginning, we naturally progressed toward being sustainable. I’ve always been drawn to using natural fibres and creating ways to avoid wastage; looking at how the printing is done to make sure it’s eco-friendly and water-based. But of course, as we learn and grow, and especially with regards to sustainability, there’s new information to learn, and ways we can do better. It really is a constant journey of learning. You have to try and make every step of your business to be as sustainable as possible; and not just your business, but your home as well. If we all just work towards that, we can make a bigger difference.”

Recently, in October 2020, ahead of the virtual SAFW runway show, she went on a different kind of journey, driving from Cape Town to Joburg. “We recorded this show on the fifth of October and then it was launched on the 24^th. I drove for 17 hours with the collection at the back of the car, holding the hats and everything, just to make sure that they all arrive perfectly and on time, and then we spent the day recording everything.”

It’s been a little over a month since the show, and Ferreira is once again hard at work preparing to launch some of the pieces on her e-commerce website. She also stocks Beyond Boutique in Knysna, Virgule in Johannesburg, as well as the current summer pop-up at the V&A waterfront in Cape Town.

“We’re in production at the moment, and by next week I’ll be releasing a few items from the new collection. And some of the other pieces like the jumpsuit and the jersey will be for next winter. What’s great about the collection is that it’s trans-seasonal; and because I am a huge advocate for slow fashion, I really do want to take this collection slow. I feel that every piece is special, and it deserves its sole attention. And if it takes some time to launch it properly, I think it will be better received by the customer. So that is my concept for this collection, to rather take it slow, and have launches every week or every third week.” DM/ML