From Engineering to Fashion

Taking you through the world of fashion through the eyes of Neo Mokhethi. ” I don’t limit myself when it comes to creativity”, – fashion entrepreneur Neo Mokhethi.

About Neo Mokhethi

I’m from Soweto and currently based in Soweto. I am a self-taught creative artist, an entrepreneur, an explorer, and an ideologist.

What do you do?

As a creative artist, I work mostly in the fashion industry. I’m specifically focusing on coming up with ideas and concepts which are not a cliche to the fashion industry. The aim is to do my research and experiment with these concepts which are not familiar within the fashion industry. At the moment I’m still working on different designs, which I’ll be releasing later this year. My idea aside from fashion is to create a forum where all entrepreneurs come together to talk about their ideas and how to bring them to light. How these ideas could create job opportunities for our fellow youth and benefit communities and societies.

In your own words, define fashion

Fashion for me is more than just wearing clothes and looking attractive. Fashion for me is a lifestyle, my daily bread. I can’t leave the house not looking presentable, fashion for me reflects personality, character, reflects my own thoughts. I express my ideologies through fashion. I’m not a talkative person, so I express myself through my style. Everywhere I go I want people to recognise my work, my creativity is expressed through my style.

WHO and WHAT inspired you to create your designs?

I am my own inspiration, but mostly things that inspire me to create my designs is recycling. What motivated that, is the idea of having to grow within a community where there is a lack of opportunities and we tend to see how people suffer on a daily basis and how they are able to maneuver through by creating things through recycled material, [making a living]. For instance, I started by doing bags using “mielie meal sacks “, because it reflected my youth days when I couldn’t [afford to buy materials ].

What is your greatest strength ?

Believing in what I do and not even have doubts that I might fail. I have failed before but I learned to understand, what failure is. At this point in my life, I don’t have any fears.

Tell us about your challenges

My biggest challenge was breaking-through and having to explore and venture into the fashion industry. I studied engineering at the University of Johannesburg, however, I was focusing more on fashion. The hardest decision I had to make was moving away from engineering into fashion, I was afraid of the consequences.

My long-terms goals

I want to build a legacy for myself in the fashion industry in the creative space. I want to collaborate with big names and [the vision] is to see myself all over Africa to all over the world.

This youth month we celebrate Neo’s determination to not only grow himself but the society at large.