Sindiso Khumalo

Sindiso Khumalo is a South African textile and fashion designer based in Cape Town. Trained as an architect, she founded her eponymous womenswear label in 2015 and works with hand-drawn prints, organic and recycled materials, and artisan workshops in South Africa and Burkina Faso. Each of her collections takes a Black woman from history as its subject, among them the South African activist Charlotte Maxeke, the Yoruba princess Sarah Forbes Bonetta, and the American abolitionist Harriet Tubman. Khumalo was one of eight finalists for the 2020 LVMH Prize and received the Best Independent Designer award at that year's Green Carpet Fashion Awards.

Early life and education

Khumalo was raised in Durban and is from KwaZulu-Natal. She draws on her Zulu and Ndebele heritage in her work, and has said that her mother, an activist, shaped the emphasis on social equality in her designs.

She studied architecture at the University of Cape Town before moving to London, where she worked for the architect David Adjaye. She then completed a master's degree in design for textile futures at Central Saint Martins.

She designs her textiles by hand using watercolor and collage. The label uses organic cotton, hemp and recycled fabrics and does not mass-produce. Khumalo has argued that sustainability cannot be reduced to materials alone and should be understood alongside poverty alleviation, describing environmental damage and poverty as linked.

For International Women's Day in 2022, Vans invited the retailer Sarah Andelman to select four women designers to rework classic styles for its limited-edition Vault line; Khumalo was among them, and her shoe used the "Zulu Princess" print.

In April 2023 she released a limited-edition collection of dresses, swimwear and accessories for & Other Stories, part of H&M Group, made from organic cotton, recycled cotton and linen. In July 2025 Khumalo opened her first store, in the Longkloof precinct in Cape Town, furnished in part with surplus tiles and repurposed furniture by South African makers. The museum holds several of her garments in its permanent collection, including the "Miss Celie" dress and bonnet. She has also shown work at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark and Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, and has spoken on sustainability in fashion at the United Nations.