Take Two

When Thebe Magugu set out to transform a fuchsia-pink ball gown from Pierpaolo Piccioli's Valentino-and Piccioli followed suit on a jaunty green Magugu pantsuit-each designer channelled their creativity into something fantastically new.

- HAMISH BOWLES

When South Africa's fashion wunderkind Thebe Magugu first opened the mystery crate from Rome containing Pierpaolo Piccioli's Valentino haute couture garment, he recognised it at once as the dress that Tracee Ellis Ross wore to grace the 2018 Emmy Awards. This was the garment chosen by Piccioli that Magugu would be tasked with reimagining as the second chapter of US Vogue's dress-swap initiative (see last September's issue for what Tomo Koizumi and Maison Margiela's John Galliano came up with): two designers working their individual alchemy to transform a fellow creator's work. For Piccioli, the project has special resonance. "I love the idea of reinterpreting," he explains, "but I love even more the idea of creating a moment between two identities, two cultures-this conversation creates a new energy.

In Magugu's Johannesburg studio, conversation began with the miracle of Piccioli's full-bloom fuchsia-pink ball gown, which soon revealed itself to be buoyed by underskirts of filmy net and stiff crin, erupting in puff-ball ruffles at the bodice and elaborately pinch-pleated into a tiny waist. Small wonder that Ross later declared that her appearance in it was "what you call a fashion moment... I have never felt prettier in my life."