The Witness of Cloth: Sari for Change at Design Week Johannesburg, 44 Stanley

At this year’s Design Week Johannesburg, Sari for Change presents The Witness of Cloth - an installation that traces a journey across continents, cultures, and generations. Staged at 44 Stanley, the exhibition brings together heritage textiles, contemporary silhouettes, and the transformative power of women’s hands to explore what it means to belong everywhere and nowhere at once.

Conceived by Iman Ganijee and Rayana Edwards, both artists shaped by mixed heritages and ocean-crossing histories, the installation reflects a lived experience of hybridity - of carrying multiple worlds within a single body. Here, cloth becomes witness: keeper of memory, vessel of migration, and evidence of evolving culture and identity.

A Dialogue Between Heritage and Contemporary Fashion

The installation begins with a steel-frame rail displaying heritage textiles that have travelled across the Indian Ocean world and into the hands of Sari for Change artisans:

• Maasai blanket
  
• Banarasi sari
• Madras check sari
• Floral silk sari

Suspended beside these fabrics are garments made from the very textiles they reference - each piece a translation, a renewal. Styled with jewelry, accessories, and cultural elements from their places of origin, the installation forms a living conversation between history and modernity, tradition and reinterpretation.

Blown-up portraits from earlier shoots anchor the pieces in visual storytelling, while an  sewing machine - the first tool trainees ever learn on- sits at the center like a quiet monument to women’s labour and transformation. Around it hang Dream Bags, the inaugural creation of new trainees, free for visitors to take home.

The Heritage Hug - Maasai Blanket x Sari Reversible Puffer Jacket

This piece merges two East African textile traditions that have travelled vast distances across highlands, coasts, and generations. The bold geometry of the Maasai blanket meets the expressive storytelling of the Khanga, whose printed proverbs - ujumbe - have long carried messages of wisdom, humour, love, and resilience.

Lined with sari silk, the puffer becomes a heritage hug: an embrace between cultures shaped by centuries of movement across the Indian Ocean.
For Ganijee, Kenyan-born with Indian ancestry, this garment represents a reconciliation of lineage - the warmth of identity that wraps rather than divides.

Part armour, part memory, it honours the quiet, enduring power of women’s hands transforming cloth into story.

 

The Madras Lungi Skirt - A Shared Oceanic Language

A tribute to shared histories of wrapping and resilience, the Lungi Set reimagines Chennai’s handwoven cotton and silk heritage into a contemporary two-piece silhouette. Lightweight, breathable, and rich in story, it reflects the fluidity of movement found across the Indian Ocean world - from South Indian lungis to Kenyan khangas and Malay sarongs.

For Iman, this piece carries a deeply personal lineage: inspired by her grandfather in his lungi and the women across Kenya whose khangas define everyday grace. In honouring these gestures of wrapping - for comfort, labour, modesty, and belonging - the garment pays homage to the people who carry their histories in cloth.

 

The Banarasi Frill Kimono - Cape Malay Gold

The Banarasi sari originates from Varanasi, India, and is one of South Asia’s most revered handwoven textiles. Crafted on jacquard or handlooms with metallic zari threads, its intricate floral and geometric patterns can take weeks or even months to complete. Traditionally worn during weddings and ceremonies, the Banarasi sari embodies wealth, artistry, and generational continuity.

The Cape Malay community of South Africa carries a hybrid heritage rooted in movement - shaped by Indonesian, Malaysian, Indian, and East African histories intertwined across the Indian Ocean. While diverse in expression, Cape Malay dress often features forms of wrapping, layering, and draping found across Asia and Africa.

This garment bridges the precision of Banarasi weaving with the expressive vibrancy of Cape Malay culture. The frilled kimono silhouette celebrates a hybrid identity forged through resilience and reinvention. Its layered folds and gold tones echo wedding ceremonies - moments of colour, ritual, and joyful opulence.

The Floral Silk Kimono - The Dance of Cultures

Japanese textile traditions - from katazome to yuzen - revere harmony, line, and the quiet beauty of floral motifs. Indian silk saris echo this language through lush botanical imagery and ornate craftsmanship.

This piece places the two traditions in graceful conversation. Vintage floral saris evoke the refined minimalism of Japanese aesthetics, while the kimono silhouette provides structure, discipline, and poise.

The result is a garment that feels both meditative and ornate - a dance of cultures rendered in silk and form. It embodies the beauty of coexistence: how textile traditions, when placed side by side, reveal unexpected affinities.

The Sewing Machine - Monument of Transformation

At the center of the installation stands a vintage sewing machine - the first tool every Sari for Change trainee learns to use.

It represents transformation:

• from no formal skills to garment-making
• from discarded cloth to one-of-a-kind fashion
• from economic vulnerability to sustainable livelihood

Surrounded by Dream Bags, the first items made by trainees, the machine symbolizes the heart of the project: women becoming artisans, creators, and custodians of their own narratives.

Cloth as Culture, Culture as Evolution

Using the sari as both medium and metaphor, The Witness of Cloth curates textiles that mirror one another across oceans - a conversation between fabrics that share histories of labour, ritual, movement, and reinvention. In the end, the installation becomes a testament to transformation: of textiles, of heritage, and of the women who give these materials new life. Through garments that travel across East Africa, South Asia, Japan, and the Cape, the exhibition reveals how cloth becomes both memory and becoming - a heritage hug, a wrapped lineage, a dance of cultures stitched into form. Anchored by the sewing machine and the Dream Bags made by newly trained artisans, the work reminds us that discarded fabrics and forgotten stories can be reshaped into living expressions of identity. It is here, in the hands of women and in the movement of cloth, that culture continues to evolve, connect, and endure.