In her essay, Beauty is a Method, Christina Sharpe writes “Knowing that every day that I left the house, many of the people that I encountered did not think me precious and showed me so. My mother gave me space to be precious—as in vulnerable, as in cherished. It is through her that I first learned that beauty is a practice, that beauty is a method, and that a vessel is also “a person into whom some quality (such as grace) is infused.”
Image Courtesy of Yoliswa Mqoco
For Yoliswa Mqoco, beauty is joy. Her Instagram is easy on the eyes; a grid of thoughtfully curated soft colours, glamour, and warmth. The South African award- winning stylist, digital creator, and former advertising whizz is no novice to this; she’s long known how to wield fashion like armour. As the daughter of a no-nonsense former pageant queen, she was taught by her mum how to fortify her spirit with adornment. “Obviously in pageants, you have to dress the part so she just developed a very interesting relationship with clothing from a very, very young age. I've just never met anyone more fabulous. I remember one day I was going to school and just as I was about to leave, my mom walks out of her room and she's in like this floor-length cream fur coat, and a cream suit and like a cream fedora. She's just a very fabulous woman, immensely well dressed, understands fashion and assembling clothes in a very special way, and it's just like a natural knack for her. So we definitely picked up a lot of our style from her,” she tells me. While only her oldest sister took on competing, their household shares a love of pageantry competitions such as Miss Universe. Following in their mother’s footsteps, Mqoco and her sisters Thobeka and Nandipha command space (both digital and irl) with their style. Calling themselves “The Queens of Wilson” after their late grandfather Wilson Mqoco, all three Mqoco sisters have a way with beauty and have worked in the fashion industry in some capacity while balancing university studies and later, full-time jobs. Thobeka and Nandipha have been pivotal to Yoliswa’s personal brand with helping to pick out pieces and shooting each other’s content when they lived at home.
She practices freedom through her wardrobe, and the life that it informs. “It (fashion) has really saved me from myself and helped me through really sad moments. It's also always present in very important moments in my life. Like, my whole career is centered around it. My most beautiful memories of my life, I can tell you what I was wearing and what that made me feel. So it's definitely an emotive connection. Even as a child, that's why I didn't realize I was a fat kid until I actually started going to school. I didn't really even realize that I was different from everyone else until people would point it out to me, you know, because I still had all of those beautiful experiences with fashion because my mom made sure that I did and because I had those experiences. I was able to build up really great confidence as a kid because I always looked good. My mom taught me how to dress for my body as a fat kid and I didn't even notice that she was doing that. And then eventually, I learned from her how to dress myself. So it's amazing what just being in a good outfit can really do for you, even as a child,” Mqoco shares - contextualizing the liberatory practice of dressing one’s self.
Image Courtesy of Yoliswa Mqoco
Image Courtesy of Yoliswa Mqoco
Image Courtesy of Yoliswa Mqoco
Femicide, the killing of women by intimate partners or as the result of gender-based violence, has been at the forefront of South African women’s consciousness over the past few years. Tragic deaths of young girls flood social media which highlight the painful truths of how dangerous and agonizing it can be to exist freely as a woman, queer, or gender non-binary person. “A haven for me would be for us to live and for us to not get killed, for us to not get raped, for us to just be us. Whether we want to wear a short skirt or just live freely or kiss another woman or love another woman and not get killed for it,” she adds, describing her vision of a South Africa where irregardless of gender - everyone feels safe in their bodies and can live peacefully on ancestral lands. We take a moment to breathe and recognize both the blessings and heaviness that accompany navigating queerness and Black womanhood in Africa.
Shortly after high school, Mqoco started fashion school and began studying business, visual merchandising, styling, and fashion history. To help support herself, she got a job in a high-end boutique and soon caught the attention of frequent customers with her bold outfits. This was the perfect role for her; spending hours in the midst of beautiful clothes and being able to share her skill with others. The regulars would ask her for advice and eventually started inviting her to their homes for wardrobe makeovers and personal shopping gigs. Given Mqoco’s talent, this quickly blew up and what was once a side-job, became a career. One of her clients was a well-connected industry insider who encouraged her to get into styling. So then began her entry into the world of editorial and styling. When this started, it was more stressful than exciting so she decided to put her skills to use in advertising as a content strategist and copywriter in Johannesburg. She then made the decision to move to Cape Town and invest more time in her personal work.
"There is always a story in every outfit. It's not just clothes"
Styling is first and foremost, a form of storytelling. “I lend and borrow from people's stories and that kind of translates into what I do. I've been through so many periods of how I dress, just because I get so inspired by the people of colour and particularly the Black people that I've been around my life. I won't just put stuff together - it needs to tell some type of story. You need to look at an outfit of mine and be like, okay, she's referencing a bit of the 50s. But then there's still some elements of maybe like 80s fashion. There is always a story in every outfit. It's not just clothes,” she explains.
By continuing to develop her knack for sartorial stories, Mqoco’s impact and following has blossomed organically over time to over 70,000 people on her Instagram alone - thrusting her into the spotlight. And along with it, both adoration and hypervisibility, as she says: “I feel like the world really perceives us [Black women] as a group of people that people can just steal from, everything of ours is stolen in some way, shape or form and I really don't blame the rest of the world for doing that because Black women are the best people on earth and there's nothing we can’t do.”
Image Courtesy of Yoliswa Mqoco
Image Courtesy of Yoliswa Mqoco
Thankfully, Yoliswa Mqoco is taking charge of her future - one fabulously dressed moment at a time. Truly, there is nothing she can’t do. When we speak, she’s in the middle of redesigning her wardrobe, and busy with daily visits to fabric markets and design sessions with her tailor and seamstress. And it seems Mqoco has no signs of slowing down anytime soon as she’s planning to launch her own fashion line and start a family with her long-time partner. Hopefully soon, we’ll all be able to wear confidence just as well as she does.