- Gugu Peteni is the founder of the clothing brand GUGU BY GUGU.
- She says she started sketching and making doll clothing at the age of eight.
- The designer recently moved to Gauteng to make her mark in fashion.
Fashion designer Gugu Peteni, who was born and bred in the Eastern Cape, has hit the runways with her clothing brand GUGU BY GUGU.
We caught up with the fashion designer to unpack her journey in the fashion industry and how she broke into the industry.
Gugu describes discovering her love for fashion and designing as one similar to every other fashion designer.
“I was obsessed with fashion at a very young age. I started sketching around eight years old. I was sketching fashion illustrations and using my mom's curtains to make clothes for my dolls.”
She says being a twin sister has also influenced her interest in fashion. Many people started to view her and her sister as a unit and Gugu had to find something that would give her an individual personality other than being a twin.
“People would be like, oh, the twins or the sisters or the Peteni girl. So, there was a sense of a loss of individuality. I started realising that through fashion I found that identity again because people would be like, oh, you're the fashionable one,” says Gugu, adding how her desire to be differentiated from her sister would grow into a love for fashion and clothing.
Common with many African parents, Gugu's mother and father have not adapted to modern career fields that are related to the arts and creativity industry and she says it was a challenge to tell them that she would like to be a fashion designer.
She says her parents thought she wanted to be a seamstress and that she just wanted to “sit in a factory and put things together”. But they eventually bought into her dream and they have been supporting her ever since.
She went on to study at the Nelson Mandela University and graduated with a cum laude and an honors degree.
Her journey as a fashion designer then began at the fibre company Mohair South Africa and this gave her much exposure to knitting. Following the footsteps of Laduma Ngxokolo, Gugu says this was a similar path taken by the founder of MaXhosa Africa. She was confident that working at Mohair South Africa would put her one step closer to being a world-renowned fashion designer.
READ MORE | MaXhosa shoutouts women in upcoming collection
After three years of working as an in-house designer at Mohair South Africa she established her own clothing brand because she felt like she had learned and received much exposure for her brand to be a success.
“I didn't even want to sell stuff because I wasn't interested in more commercial fashion. But as I was doing trade shows and all these things I realised [that] I had a whole brand here,” Gugu shares.
She says creating her own brand was not something that had crossed her mind but, because people were interested in seeing what she had to offer as an individual, she started creating her own designs and GUGU BY GUGU was registered in 2020.
“So, when I actually came into formalising everything I already had a market here, I already had some form of identity.”
Fast forward to 2024, the clothing brand has done well, having been showcased on runways such as SA Fashion Week (SAFW).
READ MORE | The evolution of Imprint ZA through business, colour and handbags
Gugu says the initially entered the fashion industry as a streetwear brand and mostly focused on everyday wear such as cargo pants and hats. But, as she evolved in the industry, she felt the pressure of innovating and trying out more outgoing designs to be relatable to other international designers and brands.
Trying out new designs did bring her a new audience while maintaining the older audience but Gugu has decided to go back to her initial streetwear aesthetic.
“I'm going back to what literally like started this brand, what was in the beginning, what I wanted to create and that was like ready to wear street style,” she says.
Her latest collection focuses more on the men's streetwear aesthetic but she says the designs will speak to all audiences.
“I think as we are transforming back into who we are, we are still maintaining those audiences because I feel like it's a mixture of the two worlds that we were trying to find in between.”
Moving forward Gugu says the brand will be working towards making a mark to the Gauteng audience because they have recently moved to the province. Without revealing too much Gugu says there will be a few pop-ups from the brand across the Gauteng province.
Gugu would also love to collaborate with other designers and creatives such as Rich Mnisi, Thebe Magugu, Munkus, and Jacquemus Bam.
