The circumstances you find yourself in and the challenges brought forth are merely there to aid your growth and fight the odds when everything is against you. If the road to your success has no hardships then it probably leads to nowhere special. Revise your game plan and make certain that those who surround you are beneficial to your development. Don’t be so selfish to leave out people that could add great value to your triumphant story – because more often than not, these companions could save you the trouble of working on your own and having to start all over again, when disappointments hinder your progress.

In the era that we live in, I’d be more surprised to learn of people who expect more handouts, rather than to act on their own abilities. We live in a time where if you aren’t making things happen for yourself, then the active minds and ambitious souls walk on by and catch up to those that continue to search for more opportunities. There’s no excuse not to make it happen, as there’ll always be reasons why you should. No dream is too small to achieve, because even those who remain hopeful still seek reason to be encouraged.

Bespoke PHR is a business of tailored menswear headed by three determined entrepreneurs: Kwandile Dladla, Nkululeko Makhubu and Jacob Nakedi, the operations facilitator of the business venture. They were brought together by devotion, for suits and more precisely, for sophistication and simplicity that compliments their fondness in traditional garments. Meeting with Kwandile and Nkululeko was refreshing because their ideas and opinions about their capabilities as entrepreneurs are intriguing. “After long arguments, ridiculous names were mentioned and eventually Bespoke PHR became our choice. Bespoke is a certain way of making clothes, meaning the customer has control and everything is tailored according to the specifications that they want. They become the designer in a sense, as the clothes have to speak on their behalf.” Nkululeko, the financial manager of Bespoke PHR explained.

Nkululeko further clarified the significance of the three values that they incorporate into the business. “The acronym, PHR stands for pride, honour and respect. As African men and I stress the African part – these are the three values we have to stand by. For some reason, I get a negative response when I say pride but then again we are kings; we are negus and you have to take pride in who we are. From your skin colour, to the way you walk and the way you talk. With honour, you have to honour everything you touch; the clothes that you wear and the woman that you touch. Respect is self-explanatory. You can’t survive if you don’t have respect. You have to have respect for yourself and those around you.

”Kwandile is a stylist and a merchandiser and is in charge of the marketing. He initially started out alone before they formed the partnership. It felt somehow orchestrated, seeing as how they met. “I was on my own and I was into the sartorial Italian look and style. When I met Nkululeko at the Mercedes Benz Fashion Week; he approached me and told me that he liked the suit I was wearing. We spoke, built a connection and then decided to work together. Jacob and Nkululeko used to sell suits at markets and that’s how we came together.”

“It’s a very interesting and long story of how we decided to focus solely on selling suits. We are black kids from Soweto and the most that the world expects us to do is to make printed t-shirts that have something written on them. So when someone from our cultural background caters something that’s not expected, it’s a little surprising. You’d expect people from a privileged background to do what we do. We are not expected to do this, we are about breaking boundaries. No, actually, we are breaking pavements. We chose to make suits because it’s really not part of the fabric of our people.”

Both Kwandile and Nkululeko share amusing stories of how they came to love the elegance that comes with wearing a suit. 

Kwandile’s father wore suits all the time and would ridicule him when he only wore a t-shirt and shorts. From an early age, he taught him how to dress and usually bought clothes for him. His dad would wear linen trousers and loafers even when they watched soccer. He grew up with that and believes the fashion trait is imprinted in his genetic code. Nkululeko’s granddad was on a level beyond comprehension. His usual routine on weekends involved getting up, taking a bath and dressing up to the nines just to do the garden. When he would ask him why he wouldn’t wear t-shirts, he bluntly told him that if it doesn’t have a collar then it’s just underwear. He needed not to say anything more.Confidence, determination, a year’s worth of research and strategic planning came into play when the trio set out to start the company. “When you start out, you can be confident but you can never really know if it will work out or not. 

The best we did was put out our entire efforts and hoped the world would accept us for our contribution. We were confident and we did our research for a year and a half, from 2012 until sometime in 2013. We went full-fledged in 2014 and started working. It takes a while to make a bespoke suit because it’s hand-made. The artesian takes time because it’s more of the craft that goes behind it. We design the suits, choose the fabric and control the details of the end product.”

“It was most difficult to get the finances to start up, the marketing and getting people to believe in us and the brand. People know and they can feel if you’re not genuine, they will call you out if you mislead them.”

Bespoke PHR’s highest achievement yet was designing a suit and dressing Parks Tau, the major, at the State of the City Address, earlier this year. Somehow, they knew even before it happened that they would end up in a sartorial establishment. “It was always going to get here. We could have never chosen anything else; life pushed us in this direction. It was meant to happen the day we met.” Presently, they are planning a showcase exhibition where the consumer can feel the product first-hand, interact with the founders and ask questions related to the various suits on show. “People have to understand what they are buying, to believe in the product and be satisfied we what we put out.”

Under stressful situations, amongst the three of them, someone becomes the voice of reason. 

“We deliberate when we take on certain projects. We reject more than we accept. We are focused more on quality because that’s our priority. When we reject people, we discuss and explain within reason. We have a 100-year plan and we’ll take this baby to the moon. The foundation is solid and the people will come because we don’t need the fancy gibberish.” Nkululeko and Kwandile stated.

Bespoke PHR is human with an African elegance that appeals to humanity. You’d have to wear the suit to feel the texture, the design and the perfection sewn with each stitch. They stick to the classic basics; grey, navy blue and black. And apart from everything else, they are traditionalists and swear on simplicity. The Bespoke PHR brothers have sophistication, eminence and tradition rooted in their creations and they bring with them African pride. So, they are Perfectionists in every sartorial sense and are true hard-workers who don’t conform to anything less.

“Art is making the comfortable uncomfortable. It is something that jumps up and it affects you.” – Kwandile Dladla

“Art is any human emotion captured in one creation.” – 

Nkululeko Makhubu

“Art is the ability to interpret and express an emotional state using colour, words, and geometrics that heeds one’s senses.” – 

Jacob Nakedi

Bespoke PHR contact info

Website: www.bespokephr.com
Email: Admin@bespokePHR
Tel: 072 388 7735 / 073 122 6440
Address:
Office 105D The Main Change
20 Kruger Street
Maboneng
City and Suburban Johannesburg
2094

Article by Sithembiso Promise Xaba

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You don’t have to have everything figured out only because everyone around you has managed to do so. When people have made plans and are clued up on how to go about things, be glad that they have and learn from them. Take the opportunity to observe their winning streak and learn from the unfortunate mishaps. When you’re confident and prepared to take your own path, go about it in an unusual way. The manner in which you choose to expose your talents to the world says a lot about you and your tenacity to achieve your untamed dreams. Get people talking and compel them to recognise that you’re different. Be stubborn about your dreams, be attractively stubborn to succeed.

No two people can be the same nor can they follow the same fate.

Taking pride in one’s creative madness and recognising how to sell it to everyone else is a talent on its own. When we fall in love with our own habits and how we make others feel about themselves – we feed off the smiles and the sound of genuine laughter and in return, turn that joy into our own. To make a living out of people’s appreciation for happiness and gags is a sure way to recognise that hey, I might just be funny. Lazola Gola, is incredibly hilarious, no doubt. His outlook and the peculiar observation he has about life and how he feels drawn to certain things – surpasses other things that another person may take for granted. He lives in his moment and makes it his own, and then shares it with those who seek inspiration.

He was a little unnerved by the list of questions I had before me. I reassured him that there was no need for that, as he was almost ready to start praying. He calmed down and revealed his creative comedic genius and simply revelled. “I went to Waldorf School in Cape Town. I was naughty and a class clown really. It was the best part of school because I’d go to school to meet my friends and we’d just make nonsense. It got us into a lot of trouble and my mom wasn’t very happy about my behaviour. Academically, I did well and that was a redeeming quality. I also got into skateboarding and it counted as being creative when we’d figure out where to skate and how to make combinations. Most of the friends I went to school with are in creative fields and they are pretty creative. They live all over the world.” Surprisingly, Lazola doesn’t read much fantasy or fiction books. “I don’t like fiction and I don’t know why but I do like non-fiction. It’s pretty weird because I like making up things. I like biographies, like those self-help books and especially autobiographies. I learn the most from those.”

Growing up with his successful and incredibly gifted comedian brother, Loyiso Gola, was an experience he can’t compare to any other. “I can’t really compare because I never had any other brother who wasn’t Loyiso Gola. However, he definitely influenced my career choice, especially at the beginning. When I was young, I used to go watch him perform at different comedy shows just to check it out. I used to write a lot of jokes and then send them to him and ask him if they were funny or not. I came to visit him once when he was on The Pure Monate Show and I got to meet a bunch of other crazy talented comedians. That’s when I realised that this could be done.”

“The thing about comedy is that you don’t need anyone to tell you if your joke is terrible or not, the audience tells you straight away. You can’t trick yourself into thinking it is a really good joke, if the audience doesn’t think it is. The best barometer is the audience. So if anyone puts you down before the audience it makes no sense because they don’t even know it. They may suggest on how to deliver or say the joke but the audience gives you a direct report because you can’t fool them. It’s an autonomous thing that makes you humble and truthful.”

Lazola moved to Johannesburg in 2007 to study at the University of Witswatersrand for a BCom Economics and Marketing degree but dropped out in second year. “I wasn’t feeling the finance part of the course because it took the fun out of maths. It was weird because I could feel that it wasn’t what I wanted to do because I was doing stand-up comedy on the side at the time. I didn’t really prioritise my studies and I dropped out because my marks were horrible. I didn’t care and I decided to do as much stand-up comedy as I could. If anyone gave me a gig I was there, studying or no studying. Even if I hadn’t said it out loud, it showed in my marks and attitude. People I knew somehow had their lives planned out and I hadn’t even thought about what I wanted to do after completing my degree.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a writer, as it was my favourite part of the whole process. It’s almost like figuring out a puzzle and putting it in a way that’s tangible and palatable for people to understand. Performing on stage came second. I got an opportunity to write for Late Night News for a couple of seasons which got us an Emmy nomination. I had another opportunity to work as a copywriter for Draft FCB and thereafter went to Ogilvy. I also wrote for Jozi A-listers on Vuzu which was weird and frustrating because your words are never final. I had to let go of the ego even when I thought I had written the best script ever. The good side was that we could take crazy situations and make them hyperbolic. There’s always room for new comedians to come in. Someone’s success doesn’t mean it takes away from your success. In comedy, you can have two funny people and you don’t have to rank them. I’d rather have a hundred people I find funny than only five. The more the better and the bigger the industry will get and the more people will push each other.”

Lazola hardly worries about offending or making enemies when he writes and performs, especially when the audience understand and laughs at his jokes. “I do and I don’t worry about offending anyone when I’m making a joke. I make the choice on how to say it. Once the joke is out there and I’ve said it on stage and the audience gets the joke then I don’t care if someone finds it offensive. I do care as I don’t want to offend them, as it’s not my intention to do it on purpose. People sometimes hear what they want to hear. When I’m performing, my mood doesn’t really affect the writing but it does affect the performance. I’m usually in a good wacky mood when I write material and I write most of it just before I go to sleep, when I’m relaxed and calm. Sometimes, I wake up at night and think of a joke and the best thing I do is write it down because I would’ve completely forgotten about it in the morning.” Lazola has no limits as to what he wants to achieve next. “I want to do everything. I want to sell out one-man shows and be known globally. 

I’d also like to travel and have my own show where I can have complete creative freedom. And there’s still a lot more to achieve the further along I go. These dreams are crazy enough and they are achievable.” Currently, he’s just finished shooting a pilot episode of a sketch show he’s working on with some of the comedians who were a part of the Pure Monate Show. The show will air later in the year. The eccentric and talented comedian finds it hard to describe himself and hardly takes over a room. He’s rather observant, loose and different from the norm. He’s stimulating and insightful, so he’s Provocative, and a funny, funny man.

“Art is creating something that wasn’t there for the people. It is taking an idea that’s different and making it relatable. It’s an observation in this world that is out of this world.” – Lazola Gola

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Sithembiso Promise Xaba | Movers and shakers