How a Joburg-based designer is turning waste into fashion

For the past few years Victoria Yards has been Lise Kuhle’s Johannesburg home, the place where her love for plastics, passion for people and eye for design blend into a business that is as socially conscious as it is stylish.

Kuhle’s journey began far from Joburg. Originally from Cape Town, she started by manufacturing household essentials using upcycled plastic. While her first business model didn’t take off as she’d hoped, a turning point came when a close friend asked her to make a bag covered in the beautifully patterned fabric commonly known as seshweshwe.

The response was instant. People loved the bags, and the SHWE collection was born.

From Cape Town to Durban and now Johannesburg, Kuhle continued to refine the art of combining upcycled materials, from plastic to building wraps to billboard fabric, with proudly South African textiles. Today, her SHWE bags and accessories are locally made, durable, and deeply cultural pieces that celebrate African identity.

“I’d go to Sandton City, see a bag and think, this would look stunning with this or that. That’s where most of my designs start,” she says with a laugh.

Kuhle’s admiration for the seshweshwe fabric goes far beyond aesthetics. She is drawn to its history, how it travelled into South Africa and how its patterns became woven into our cultural identity.

She fears that without conscious effort, fabrics like seshweshwe could fade away, and she is determined to keep them alive through modern design.

At the centre of Kuhle’s work is her unwavering commitment to the empowerment of women.

Through her business she employs women from different backgrounds – “the ladies”, as she affectionately calls them – and ensures that each of them not only earns but grows.

One of her proudest moments was seeing a worker’s daughter secure a place in an air hostess school, funded, supported and inspired through her work at SHWE.

“I don’t want a young woman under 35 stuck behind a sewing machine with no progress. That’s wasted talent,” she says. This belief pushes her to constantly open doors, share opportunities and help others step into their potential.

Many of Kuhle’s raw materials come from donations, and not the kind people expect.

She’s worked with building wraps from construction sites, car seat covers, used flags from golf days and old billboard fabrics. Anything that can be sewn can be turned into a bag, a jacket, a piece of art.

She also believes skills are not a barrier.

“I don’t require people to have the skills. They just need to show up, be keen and enthusiastic,” she says.

Kuhle has big hopes for the future of SHWE. Her short-term goal is to be organised, and her long-term goal is to expand across Africa and take a legacy of sustainable South African fashion with her.

More than anything, she wants customers to feel connected to the products they buy; to know they are contributing to something meaningful, sustainable and proudly local. DM

This story is produced by Our City News, a nonprofit newsroom that serves the people of Johannesburg.