The Rabbihats are starting to become a well known stand alone brand, we went on a collaborated photo shoot with Floyd Avenue along with his team as he tells us a bit more about the Follow The Rabbi Hat project. As always we had our trusty steed and resident photographer Aubrey Ndiweni.
Describe to us and our readers what exactly is Follow The Rabbi Hat
What I would say Follow The Rabbi Hat is, it's an artistic movement for artists, by artists. What we do is also build the brand with other craftsman within our trade were we work with other pears on the Rabbi Hats project. At the moment, there's two other partners besides me, Isaac Mofihle (photographer), Slovo (graphic designer) and were focusing on the hat range at this time.
How was Follow The Rabbi Hat created
I got fascinated by Rabbi hats initially when I was visiting one of my Jewish friends, the hole concept intrigued me, I went on a personal mission to find one for myself, disappointed I was to find out that there wasn't any shops that sold the specific type of Rabbi hat I wanted, thus came the birth of Follow The Rabbi Hat. I love great things, not only related to fashion so I did my own research and found a factory in urban Cape Town that manufactures these hats. The pleasure of my excitement could not be explained, am all about quality and providing the best of it there is, and this factory gave all these qualities. I want people to understand that these aren't just hats or the next fashion item, hard work and sweat go into making every single one as most of the work is hand made at the factory.
What does Follow The Rabbi Hat mean for your personal branding ? Is there still going to be a Floyd Avenue or Smarteez range/collabo to expect?
Let me make this clear now, Smarteez is and will always be my first home, so definitely people always should expect something from us together. Although we all have our own solo's we'll always work together. As for Floyd Avenue creations, yes ... that's my love, my own baby. With follow the Rabbi Hat it's a different thing, for example I stated earlier that we're more focused now on spreading the movement using the hats range and featuring the hats with as many artist, fashion icons etc as much as we can, just as were doing with you guys ( Flat base decoded ) and Aubrey Ndiweni (photographer / film video editor) today.
What should we expect from Follow the Rabbi Hat in the future ?
The success of Follow The Rabbi Hat is coming exceptionally well, what you should expect is unique classic designs, we'll always keep it as classic and cultured, every product you'll get by us will have great production, manufacturing and focus to the design. I love clean sleek designs sometimes and with Floyd avenue I couldn't do that as it holds a funky look to it but with the Rabbi Hat I think we can archive that. Next year the Follow The Rabbi Hat brand will be well groomed, we've already started working on a few t-shirt designs and a full label feature.
Will there ever be a full-on independent range focused on the brand alone ?
As it is we are working on a range which will hopefully be ready next year. I'd also like to add that these hats were firstly worn by the colonialist when they come to Africa I added a bit of me and put them out for the public. No one as yet has made an effort to use this unique hat to our culture as a fashion attribution, I just sore a loop hole and went on.
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Mbali Mdledle | Creatives
