Mzukisi Mbane is taking over the world one city at a time
There is something particularly compelling about a fashion house that knows where it comes from and refuses to make that origin smaller in order to go further. For more than a decade, Mzukisi Mbane has been building Imprint South Africa with that conviction. What began as a distinctly South African fashion language has grown into something much broader: an Afro-Futuristic house that uses print, colour, silhouette and storytelling to examine the many ways Africa remembers itself—and imagines its future. Print is central to the Imprint identity, but calling it simply a signature would be to underestimate what Mbane is doing with it. Within the house, print becomes archive and memory; it carries references to history, culture and identity while giving them room to evolve. There is an insistence that African heritage can be celebrated without being frozen in time. That perspective has made 2026 an important chapter for the house.
In Paris, Mbane was named Best Fashion Designer 2026 through Africa Fashion Up, receiving a Balenciaga-endorsed prize alongside opportunities for mentorship and further development in the city. It is the kind of international recognition that can change the trajectory of a young fashion house. Yet what is perhaps more significant is what came after: Imprint returned to the continent, continuing its expansion without ever suggesting that global ambition requires distance from home.
At Luju Festival in Eswatini, Imprint occupied the position of headline designer, bringing its fashion into a cultural environment that exists beyond the traditional fashion-week calendar. In Nairobi, that continental conversation became even more expansive. For Noir Kenya Fashion Week, Mbane presented 23 looks that looked into the house's own history, bringing together prints, motifs and visual references from different points in Imprint's evolution. The collection became something of a living archive. It is a fitting description for a brand whose work has always been concerned with memory.
Rather than abandoning what came before in pursuit of the next new thing, Mbane revisited the language that made Imprint recognisable and allowed it to speak again. The Nairobi editorial carried that idea beyond the runway. Photographed by Kenyan photographer Rogers Ouma, with models Mary Kendi, Khamiss and Aman, the story brought South African fashion into dialogue with Kenyan creative talent. The result feels less like a brand arriving in a new market and more like an exchange between creative communities—a reminder that there is no singular way to tell an African story. This distinction matters. African fashion is increasingly visible on global stages, but visibility alone is not the same as influence. Imprint's journey is interesting because it demonstrates what can happen when international ambition is built from cultural specificity rather than in spite of it. Its work has travelled from South Africa to Paris, Milan, Lagos, Shanghai and beyond, while the identity at its centre remains firmly rooted. Perhaps that is the mark Mbane is really leaving. Not simply a recognisable print or a successful collection, but evidence that African fashion can be contemporary, ambitious, commercially relevant and deeply connected to its own history, all at once. The world is looking toward Africa. Imprint South Africa has been preparing for that gaze for more than a decade.