Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE FOCUS
AFRICAN LUXURY
BRANDING
From Soft Power to Queer Futures
Mehita Iqani
Focus
African Luxury Branding
Bringing together critical race, queer and decolonial analytical
approaches, visual analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis, this
book explores the discursive strategies deployed by African luxury
brands in an age of cross-platform, intertextual branding.
Building on literature examining the aesthetics and politics of
African luxury, this book demonstrates how leading African luxury
brands create visual material speaking to complex sensibilities of
culture, nature, and future. Iqani shows how powerful brand
narratives and strategies reveal ethical and ideological messages that
function to re-position Africa in an increasingly congested global
marketplace of ideas. In acknowledging that there is a strong political
validity to recognizing the importance of African brands staking their
claim in luxury, this book also problematizes the role these brands play
in the promotion of luxury discourses, advancing the project of
capitalism and their contribution to broader patterns of inequality.
Shedding new light not only on luxury branding strategies but also on
the idea of a luxurious global “Africanicity” and on the complex cultural
politics of South Africa, African Luxury Branding will be of interest to
advanced students and researchers in disciplines, including Critical
Advertising Studies, African Studies, Media and Communications.
Mehita Iqani is the South African Research Chair in Science
Communication at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
Routledge Critical Advertising Studies
Series Editor: Jonathan Hardy
Routledge Critical Advertising Studies tracks the profound changes that have
taken place in the field of advertising. Presenting thought-provoking scho-
larship from both prominent scholars and emerging researchers, these
ground-breaking short form publications cover cutting-edge research con-
cerns and contemporary issues within the field. Titles in the series explore
emerging trends, present detailed case studies and offer new assessments of
topics such as branded content, economic surveillance, product placement,
gender in marketing, and promotional screen media. Responding quickly to
the latest developments in the field, the series is intellectually compelling,
refreshingly open, provocative, and action-oriented.
Branded Entertainment and Cinema
The Marketisation of Italian Film
Gloria Dagnino
Branding Diversity
New Advertising and Cultural Strategies
Susie Khamis
Branded Entertainment in Korea
Hyunsun Yoon
African Luxury Branding
From Soft Power to Queer Futures
Mehita Iqani
Consumer Society and Ecological Crisis
Leslie M. Meier
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Critical-Advertising-Studies/book-series/RCAS
African Luxury
Branding
From Soft Power to Queer
Futures
Mehita Iqani
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2023 Mehita Iqani
The right of Mehita Iqani to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Iqani, Mehita, author.
Title: African luxury branding : from soft power to queer
futures / Mehita Iqani.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. |
Series: Routledge critical advertising studies | Includes
bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022031173 | ISBN 9781032129617
(hardback) | ISBN 9781032129624 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003227038 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Branding (Marketing)--Africa. | Luxuries--
Africa. |
Selling--Luxuries--Africa. | Luxuries--Social aspects--Africa.
Classification: LCC HF5415.1255 .I39 2023 | DDC
658.827096--dc23/eng/20220629
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022031173
ISBN: 978-1-032-12961-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-12962-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22703-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003227038
Typeset in Times New Roman
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements viii
1 African Luxury Brands in Global and Local
Context 1
2 From Africa to the World: Cultural Inheritance
as Soft Power 20
3 Back to Nature: Beauty and African Luxury
Minimalism 41
4 Shiny Futures and Afro-Fabulous Queer Luxury 63
5 From Soft Power to Queer Futures: New
Directions for African Luxury 85
Appendix 1: Details on Interviews 100
Bibliography 103
Index 120
Figures
2.1 Thebe Magugu’s Basotho Poncho, front and back view
from Instagram post. Reproduced with permission of
Thebe Magugu. Photography by Travys Owen 23
2.2 Necklace collection, © The Herd, Reproduced with
kind permission of Mbali Mthethwa 27
2.3 Basotho initiates, Thebe Magugu’s reference for his
Basotho Poncho. Photograph © David M. M. Riep
and reproduced with his kind permission 33
2.4 The Herd Instagram post, hand work stitching together
past and present. © The Herd, reproduced with kind
permission of Mbali Mthethwa 35
3.1 Nothing Basic about Gugu Intimates. Photograph by
Jeffrey Rikhotso. © Gugu Intimates, reproduced with
kind permission of Gugu Nkabinde 46
3.2 Returning the Gaze, Thembinkosi Goniwe, Billboard,
2002 © Thembinkosi Goniwe, reproduced with his
kind permission 48
3.3 An African “superfruit” and “miracle” skin care
ingredient. Image © Nomad Marrakech and re-
produced with their kind permission 51
3.4 Suki Suki’s “miraculous oil” is specially formulated
for natural African hair. Image © Suki Suki Naturals,
and re-produced here with kind permission 54
4.1 1 of 1 – Karabo Poppy’s hand-customized Air Force
1s, as posted on Instagram. Fair use of publicly
posted image 68
4.2 Karabo Poppy x Rich Mnisi – Big Dyke Energy, as
posted on Instagram. Fair use of publicly shared image 69
4.3 Rich Mnisi’s Black Leather Handbag, as posted on
Instagram. Fair use of publicy shared image 72
Figures vii
4.4 Rich Mnisi’s Nwa-Mulamula Chaise, as posted on
Instagram. Fair use of publicy shared image 73
4.5 Desire Marea X Calvin Klein – who is selling whose
shine? © Desire Marea, reproduced with their kind
permission 81
Acknowledgements
Every effort has been made to trace and contact copyright holders, but
this has not been possible in every case. The publishers would be pleased
to hear from any copyright holders not acknowledged here so that this
section may be amended at the earliest opportunity.
This book has been a long time in the planning and writing, as I
have been thinking critically about luxury for several years.
In the first instance, I am grateful to the creative minds who have
produced the artworks, luxury objects, and imagery that got me
thinking, and who have given me permission to reproduce some of
their work in this book. To all the research participants that I cite in
this book, as well as those that I didn’t cite here: thank you for sharing
your insight and expertise about the African luxury industry and
helping me to shape my thinking on this topic.
Thank you to the Governing Intimacies project, especially Professor
Srila Roy, for funding support that helped me buy some free time
to complete this writing. This research was also supported by an African
Humanities Programme grant and writing residency at Makerere
University, a South African National Research Foundation grant, and
a fantastic writing residency at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced
Study, which I’ll never forget and hope I get to do again some day.
My thanks also to everyone who listened to my ideas, suggested case
studies, put me in touch with people to approach for interviews, or
told me about luxury spaces I should visit, or in other ways supported
this project: David du Preez, Brett Rogers, Nat Iqani, Nicky Falkof,
Gina Waldman, Cobus van Staden, Lebogang Mogashoa, Katlego
Disemelo, Maya Loon, Hayley Gewer, Bettina Malcomess.
I am grateful to the research assistants who helped with interview
transcription and literature reviewing, particularly Tessa Hellberg but
also Hlonepho Phakoe, Jessie Schultz, and Vicky Amupulo. Appreciation
to Gabriel Shamu who helped me source image permissions.
Acknowledgements ix
My thanks to the team at Routledge, and the Critical Advertising
Studies series editor, Jonathan Hardy, for seeing the potential in my
book proposal, and to the reviewers for their helpful feedback.
In some ways this book is my small ode to Johannesburg, a city in
which I lived for a decade, and which consistently challenged and
inspired me. Although complex and unfair, Johannesburg is also a city
that never ceases to inspire. Johannesburg’s love of creativity and
luxury and the brilliant people that it attracts with its promises of
fame, fortune, and fun, who go there to live and fulfil their dreams, are
its biggest assets despite its lovely, rolling, rocky koppies, lush green
suburbs, and twinkling cityscapes. As a highly unequal city, Jozi has
its share of misery and luxury both. My study of the luxury that
is celebrated in Johannesburg, and other African cities like it, is
intended to contributed to bigger debates about inequality, what it
looks and feels like, and how it might be overcome, in this city,
country, and continent. We need to see both wealth and poverty to
understand how to transcend both.
