Constructing Comfort with Kiggy

Buying outfits that are the perfect fit is a stress we are all accustomed to. No one understands this more than creative economist and fashion designer Kgomotso Kiggy, also known as Kiggy with the Nice Pants. I sat down with Kiggy to discuss the challenges faced by designers, her beef with pockets, and most importantly how she has managed to create an archive of family stories through the creation of the latest Long Season collection titled, There’s No Running Away In South Africa.

A lot of creatives struggle with formalizing their craft and handling the business side of the craft. How do you navigate that and do you think you’ve mastered it?

Kiggy: I feel like that aspect of things is a practice like everything else. I didn’t study fashion, I had to learn. Every time I have a project or develop a range for Long Season I have to arm myself with a new skillset, to make clothes better than the last collection. It’s the same with business and learning business language.

When you open yourself up to working collaboratively or talking to people that have done things before you, people will show up. It’s very practical almost easy things that I feel like people shy away from when they are starting a business because it seems difficult.

How would you define South Africa’s fashion aesthetic and do you think Long Season fits into that aesthetic?

Kiggy: That’s an interesting question. You know, I think when I started as a creative entrepreneur, I quickly learned the limitations that local designers face. We don’t have a lot of access to quality production. We don’t have access to a wide variety of fabrics. It takes a long time because the industry is not easily permeable. It affects what people can produce and that’s why a lot of our brands are streetwear brands because that’s the easiest thing to produce. It’s easy to find ready-made caps, and ready-made t-shirts and just print on those. Some brands have done amazing with just those canvases. And starting with those canvases is also quite important because when you’re buying your blank T-shirts, you’re already in the supply chain that will introduce and expose you to more things and allow you to then develop your brand into stuff that you will pattern and make.

I don’t completely identify Long Season as a streetwear brand. I think we do have a lot of street perspectives, that’s where I come from. We’re probably going to be some fusion like a street luxury or whatever the terms are these days.

I also can’t think of Long Season just as a local brand. Everything that I do channels a global perspective. The idea is to push out of the idea that we’re going to be the best brand in this country because that’s not a real challenge. If you’re going to play within your context then be great, that’s already a low ceiling. The real challenge is participating in the global creative conversation.

How did you start Long Season and what inspired you to start it?

 Kiggy: I started Long Season as part of a young creative community, in 2018. At the time, my team and I were event coordinators, we ran a festival. I always knew that fashion was essentially my first love, so we branched off to curating fashion experiences for our own brands, and that’s when I came up with a show titled Long Season.

This was also around the time the moniker ‘Kiggywiththenicepants’ was born. This was when I had first dedicated myself to navigating the fashion space based on my own ideas. I had no idea how to make clothing decent enough to offer to people, but I was resolved on spending a lot of my time learning and figuring it out.

I made just pants for a while, for a small client base. Then in 2020 I made one of our staple hats, and knew then that we were ready to become Long Season the brand. We have been going since our collaboration with Rocking The Daisies.

You mentioned that your latest collection, There’s no running away in South Africa is a dedication to your late grandmother. How has grief impacted your work?

Kiggy: My grandmother has been a life altering loss for me. I threw myself into more therapy after losing her, and some of the advice my therapist gave me was to process my grief through my art.

It was an easy connection to make, because my grandmother was one of the biggest fans of my work. She gave me my first sewing machine and used to make clothes for us when we were younger.

I felt like celebrating her through the collection, and I dreamt up this show and called it “There’s no running away in South Africa” - a saying my grandmother used to say to all of us. It’s just about personal responsibility and accountability. I felt like, at that time, I needed to be very accountable to myself and I was responsible for recovery after losing someone so important to me; so I called the show that to remind me. I buried myself in so much fabric and started working on this thing for a while.

After I lost my grandma a lot of the inhibition, a lot of the fear to do something wholeheartedly left my body because I felt like I have nothing else to lose after losing someone like that. That’s what I feel the true impact of my grief has been thus far.

In what ways would you say your work has evolved? How has Long Season evolved since 2018?

Kiggy: It took me a while to even say, “I am a fashion designer” on any level because I had such respect for fashion design. I didn’t want to call myself a fashion designer before I was actually fashion designing. Now I am one of my favourite fashion designers.

The technical skill has definitely grown.  I am not formally trained and have reimagined traditional construction in many ways, but Long Season is a retailing brand and that’s something I had to be very confident to do. When people buy my clothes, they’re not constructed in a way that you would expect, which contribute to the unique experience of each piece for each wearer.  

And people want the clothes. It’s really great. We’re building a client base internationally and the feedback has been great. Long Season is becoming something that people will look at and identify very easily. We’re getting closer to the ultimate goal of being one of South Africa’s best brands.

How would you want people to feel when they wear your items?

Kiggy: Special. You know, the fact that I am not a technically trained fashion designer has been something that I have flipped on its head. It used to be a very big negative, but is now one of the bigger positives of what I do. A lot of my stuff is still hand-cut. I rarely use patterns. Because of that, a lot of my clothes have an intentional ‘one of ones’ feel. So when people buy it, you might be the only person that owns that particular shape, which is very special. No one wants to own something that everyone has.

Long Season is a family dedication.

Kiggy: The other reason why I would like people to feel special is because Long Season is a family dedication and not just to my family. My family is a South African family and a lot of my own family have their own experiences with fashion. For example, my eldest aunt used to be a reseller when we were growing up. She travelled quite a bit to do it. My dad used to be a soccer player; inherently, that means he’s a stylish guy.

My mom also loves clothes and I’ve described her as a stylist before. One of the first things that my mom told me when I got a job was a list of stores. She said to me, “Once a month buy one thing from each of these places cause you will be able to keep it forever”. So I have always had this fashion thing trained into me.  How I celebrate that right now is kind of reimaging a lot of my family’s fashion experience into Long Season. And also just celebrating what fashion means to a lot of POC families. Black people have used fashion as a vehicle of expression even when we were blocked from many other things. Expression and creativity became one of the more important tools, and I use my work in design is to celebrate that. My work is to remember those stories, to archive them, to bring them forward. It’s not just about my family.

Do you have any current obsessions that are feeding into your work at the moment?

 Kiggy: I like how things feel on the human body. How people experience those feelings. You know, clothes can affect your range of movement. The weight of clothes can affect how you feel. So when I design I like to think of those things. I like playing. One of my favourite things is to climb trees. So I make stuff that is kind of uniform to great movement, just a great experience on your physicality. I’m also immersing myself in research about what this means for differently bodies. I want to learn how things feel on a wide range of people. How to make people comfortable.