Wanda Lephoto’s first womenswear collection starts with his sister

The Johannesburg menswear designer’s collaboration with Canvas Studios lands exclusively on Bash on 13 October, a year after Bash handed him the Changemaker Award.

Wanda Lephoto built his name on menswear. His first womenswear collection, made with Bash’s private label Canvas Studios, begins somewhere far more personal: with his sister, who died in 1995 at the age of 10.

That same year, she appeared in a fashion advertisement. For Lephoto, the image stood for a new South Africa and a generation full of hope and possibility.

More than 30 years later, he has turned that memory into a question. Who might she have been today? How would she dress, how would she express herself, and what would her story say about beauty, identity and womanhood now?

Learning from women

Lephoto isn’t trying to answer that alone. “I don’t want to impose my thoughts on what women should look like,” he says. “So I’m making this collection from a viewpoint of learning from women what things should feel like and how they want to express themselves using clothing.”

That fits how he has always worked. His label is research-led, built on memory, heritage and the stories in South Africa’s scattered archives. Here, that method is aimed at the South African woman in all her multiplicity. Familiar prints, patterns and textures come back through a modern lens, nodding to heritage while pushing toward something new.

The brief is also refreshingly practical. “I’m interested in this idea of ordinary people wearing everyday clothes that feel elevated and comfortable enough for them to still feel themselves in their skins,” he says. Elevated design you can actually wear every day is the line the whole collection walks.

Sustainability runs through it too, though not only as a question of fabric. For Lephoto, it also covers local production, circularity, collaboration, and the stories a garment carries.

From awards night to the rail

The partnership goes back to the 2025 Twyg Sustainable Fashion Awards. Bash sponsored the Changemaker Award that year, and Lephoto won it for his sustainable, circular and culturally rooted work. He also took home the Trans-seasonal Design Award.

This collection is the next step from that recognition: a commercial platform for an independent South African designer, and a much bigger audience for his work.

“Wanda has an incredible ability to take stories that are deeply personal and make them feel universally relevant,” says David West, Head of Design at Canvas Studios. “This collection brings that perspective into a completely new space, while still feeling unmistakably Wanda.”

Canvas Studios is Bash’s own contemporary fashion and lifestyle brand, covering womenswear, accessories and homeware under a “canvas as a space for expression” idea. Lephoto’s eponymous label is a Johannesburg ready-to-wear menswear brand that explores African identity through fashion, research and storytelling.

For Lephoto, it’s a chance to get untold stories in front of more people and make his work more accessible, while still challenging how fashion, identity and sustainability get talked about.

The Wanda Lephoto x Canvas Studios collection launches on 13 October 2026, exclusively on Bash.