Wouna le Roux

My mum always says if only she could see the size of the pile of all the clothes she has made throughout her life, she wonders how big that mountain would be. An interesting thought. I’ve made my share of clothes, but I don’t think my pile would be a hundredth the size of my mother’s. 

Earning some money from fabric (initially always from making clothes) seems to have been a thing for me. As I teenager, I came up with the idea to dye and make mens shirts from calico. I had a good pattern, copied from one of my brother’s shirts, and using dyed calico, I thought it was unique and could earn me some pocket money. My aunt ‘invested’ R50 (about NZ$5 today) into my ‘business’, with which I could buy fabric and dye. Although not a huge sum, but it was enough to make a start. If I remember correctly, the calico was around R3/metre (30c in NZ$). I sold a few shirts, but as anyone who has ever made clothes can tell you, it is very time consuming, and definitely not a money spinner. 

However, not to be deterred. While studying Fine Arts at Uni, lycra pants suddenly became a thing, and around the same time overlockers finally reached South Africa. I was, obviously, eager to get my hands on an overlocker, but didn’t have the money. My husband (then still my boyfriend) offered to lend me his bursary money to buy the overlocker sewing machine. He had enough bursary money to also buy some lycra fabric to start off my new ‘clothing business’. My brother designed a logo for me, and helped to created a silkscreen with the word ‘wiwi’ in large letters to print down the side of the pants (Wiwi is a nickname my brother gave to me). I also printed my own labels with different sizes on white satin ribbon to read ‘wiwi, active innovation’, and S, M or L, which was sewn into the back inside of the pants. I thought it looked very smart, and quite liked the ‘active innovation’ strap line. 

I made quite a few of these lycra pants, in all the different colours I could source at the time. It was still when patterned and floral designs didn’t exist, so my pants would have the ‘wiwi’ strip on a different coloured fabric down the side of one leg, to spruce it up a bit. 

I managed to sell some to a local sports shop. They probably took pity on me, and took some off my hands. For the rest, I spent my Saturday mornings at the local flea market, and sold enough that year to pay off the overlocker and all of the fabric we bought, plus a bit. It wasn’t my worst idea, as these also did not take as long to produce as mens shirts.

None of these plans turned into money spinners. But through the years I always just ended up making clothes, wedding dresses, suits and evening wear for friends and family, often for free. 

I still have the dream of earning a living from textiles. Only now I’m hoping it can be from textile art.