Kathy Page Wood – SA fashion trailblazer and beloved force of nature and nurture

The classic Hip Hop lace-up bodice.

By Pippa de Bruyn

26 Aug 2024

The intuitively talented co-founder of one of South Africa’s most iconic fashion brands, Hip Hop, always said it like it was, endearing herself to her many friends and admirers. She will be sorely missed.

Kathy Page Wood and her erstwhile business partner, Cheryl Arthur, knew how to make a woman feel beautiful. Kathy had no formal fashion training; Cheryl, a drama graduate, did a fashion course but only “because it was too hard to get a job in theatre”.

Their first business meeting took place on a park bench with a bottle of gin and tonic – what would become a regular tradition “to just let the ideas flow”. Underworld was the first name of their business, located under Sergeant Pepper’s on Greenmarket Square. Their clothing label they called Hip Hop, “shorter, for the sew-in size”.

Kathy Page Wood (right) and her business partner Cheryl Arthur take to the catwalk at Cape Town Fashion Week 2006. (Photo: Supplied)

The Hip Hop brand. (Photo: Supplied)

First ever catalogue - when still Underworld - so 1986. (Photo: Supplied)

It was the mid-1980s - there was a wildness in the air you could almost taste, the slow-burn escalation in violence pushing us towards a precipice. But on the corner of Long and Burg, at the first Hip Hop-branded store, you stepped into another world, a place where mirrors reflected your transformation into a gypsy, a seductress, a bo-ho Raphaelite, with Kathy or Cheryl saying what even you could see: that you looked quite fabulous, darling.

“Very few independent designers in South Africa at the time were doing ready-to-wear,” Cheryl says. “We weren’t into couture. We just wanted to make happy fashion. We loved fashion magazines, but we weren’t interested in trends. We came from a different place, and we just made it up as we went along.

“Our first fashion shows were in clubs like Rita’s and the Base. We had no money but we had real chemistry. We worked hard – 12-hour days – but it never felt like a job. And we laughed. A lot. When the bank manager asked Kathy about our turnover, she didn’t know what to say. ‘I thought that’s what you did in bed,’ she told me later.”

Two decades later, the duo had a small fashion empire: seven stand-alone Hip Hop stores, 12 in the Stuttafords group, and they stocked hundreds of boutiques nationwide. They had dressed every major South African celebrity, from Yvonne Chaka Chaka to Karen Zoid. A Madiba-fabric corset was in the permanent collection of the Iziko South African National Gallery. Their label Afro Diva – a not-for-profit range inspired by Crossroads-based Nosipho Mfengwana’s vibrant silkscreen fabrics – was available in El Corte Inglés, the biggest department store in Europe.

Afro Diva, showcasing Nosipho Mfengwana’s silkscreen work. (Photo: Supplied)

Afro Diva, born from a brief by a show sponsor to create something “ethnic”, was way ahead of its time. As Kathy said in a 2003 interview for Design Indaba: “Everybody else had done ostrich and guinea fowl feathers and animal prints and Zulu beading, and no one knew what the f**k we were on about.”

Apart from the artistic merits of their design collaboration, Afro Diva’s purpose – to grow Mfengwana’s nascent silkscreen enterprise in Crossroads – was walk-the-talk corporate responsibility, rare in the early noughties world of fashion.

But the real measure of Hip Hop’s success was in the thousands of ordinary women whose lives were touched by the self-expression the brand offered. You had a relationship with a Hip Hop dress. Wearing one was an affordable form of therapy. It would be hard to part with.

I still have mine – a black button-down cloak dress, for decades now too fat to fit into, but a tactile reminder of a time when the future was a hinterland into which I was ready to shapeshift, looking like Morticia Addams, with just a touch of Victorian slag.

The classic Hip Hop lace-up bodice. (Photo: Supplied)

In The Lounge, the bar on Long Street that was a sanctuary for every reprobate of a certain age, Kathy and I cemented a deep friendship, drinking whisky and snorting cocaine, laughing about how much I f*****g hated working in advertising.

We loved to say “f**k”, followed by “that” or “it” or “everything”, bathed in Kathy’s throaty infectious laugh. She was five years older than me, married and divorced, a successful entrepreneur, but somehow we always talked about me. She was so good that way.

In 1995 she moved in with Elsabe, whom she would marry, and who would remain her beloved. Kathy and I started a book club that was specifically without rules. We read (and constantly lost) wonderful books, ate great food and often got raucously drunk. Through it all her friendship was a bedrock – it was Kathy who helped save my daughter from a dangerous flirtation with anorexia, who organised weddings and divorce parties, always making everything and everyone look fabulous.

Kathy and Els launched Farm Design Events in about 2008. Having coordinated and planned every Hip Hop fashion show, designed every store opening, it was a natural transition for Kathy to create glamorous, well-organised, memorable events. Again she was considered a trailblazer, never settling for cookie-cutter solutions but creating bespoke events for anything from YOP gatherings to presidential and World Economic Forum dinners.

“She understood that events are not about table settings or furniture, but how you make people feel,” says Els. “It was about transforming even the most cavernous hole into a comfortable, beautiful space, with the right entertainment, where everyone who entered felt special.”

Gucci party at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town. (Photo: Elsabe Gelderblom/ Farm Design)

But the woman revered for her ability to make others feel special wasn’t feeling so good herself. They say depression is a cancer of the soul. With anxiety levels constantly through the roof, the friend and sister, aunt and wife, so dearly loved and admired, took her own life.

She would have been stunned by the outpouring of grief. Karen Zoid, who paid a moving homage on Facebook to “our firecracker style queen”… “the one who could say ‘revolting’ or ‘a little bit hideous’ or ‘actually quite fabulous’ in such a visceral way”, wrote: “So sorry you were over it. It’s okay. I’m not mad. Just sad. Very.”

And how. Hamba kahle, our dearly beloved Kath. Slaap sag. DM

This personal reflection is written by Pippa de Bruyn, a Cape Town-based freelance writer specialising in travel, the South Africa destination expert for The Telegraph (UK), and co-author of several guidebooks.

Help is available if someone is contemplating suicide. Anyone who is experiencing suicidal thoughts should talk to someone they trust, consult their doctor or make contact with one of the 24-hour support lines, such as the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (0800 567 567) or LifeLine (0861 322 322). Reach out, ask for help, stay connected.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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