If you missed Part 1 on the centenary candle, you can find it here.

In a centenary year, you might expect the most significant things to arrive with fanfare. And some do. But others arrive the way the best things at Londolozi tend to arrive: quietly, through the right person, at the right moment, over a cup of tea at a kitchen table in Cape Town.

This is the story of the Londolozi 100th Apron. Deep emerald and gold, hand-stitched and limited in number, it is a small object with a long lineage. And like so much that endures at Londolozi, it began not with a brief or a budget, but with a relationship, a recommendation passed in passing, and a phone call made on instinct. A centenary invites reflection on what we choose to make, and who we choose to make it with. This apron is an answer to both.

A friendly face to a lot of you, I’m sure, Founders Camp butler, Vusi Phelembe

That is where I met Diane. But before I elaborate on how she fits into the picture, I feel it is important to say how I came to know of her at all.

Because this introduction was much like most things at Londolozi, interwoven and interconnected, spanning the kind of relationships that begin on the reserve but extend far beyond it, threading quietly through years and lives.

I found my way to Diane through Sheila Steenkamp, a Londolozi alumna. Sheila was one of Londolozi’s first executive chefs, and she is not merely a chapter in this story. She is a thread that runs through the whole of it, still present in the Londolozi culinary experience to this day, returning each year to consult, inspire and co-create with executive chefs, Chane and Kelly, on seasonal menus and the quiet standards that define a Londolozi meal. On one of these annual visits leading up to our centenary year, she had, in passing, given Bronwyn Varty the details and shared with us the importance that an apron has in a kitchen. The putting on of an apron holds ritual for many cooks, whose intention is to create nourishment and gatherings within the home. She suggested that at the heart of Londolozi’s essence is the art of gathering, and that the apron would be such a beautiful symbol of this to create in our centenary year.

And so, on the 2nd of January 2025, a plan began to form. Armed with a phone number and a brief, I went to work to create a celebratory apron that could travel to kitchens around the world, carrying a little Londolozi love and nourishment wherever it landed.

Diane is based in Cape Town, my home town too, and runs what she calls an in-house manufacturing operation. What this means practically is that she has created a space where quality is not a policy but a presence. Where every piece that leaves her hands has had her full attention. She says it plainly:

“Our passion and pride in what we do is a guarantee that you will enjoy great quality, service and individual attention at all times.”

It is the kind of statement that sounds simple until you sit inside the place it came from, and then it sounds exactly right.

Diane’s kitchen table, where the decisions were made: fabric swatches, colour charts, and apron samples spread out like a quiet invitation to choose carefully. From a hundred possible shades of green, one felt immediately right.

There is a kind of knowing that happens before any contract is signed. Before any sample is approved. It lives in the atmosphere of a place, the same instinctual recognition that you feel in the bush when the air shifts before something beautiful appears. Sitting at Diane’s kitchen table, I felt this knowing. Being welcomed into her space was less like entering an office and more like being welcomed into someone’s home, which is a privilege I do not take lightly. I took a quick photograph of the setting and sent it to Shan and Bron Varty with a single line: “how amazing is this ‘boardroom’ for my meeting?”

There was a shared feeling, immediately and instinctively, that we had made a good decision in reaching out to Diane. And from that kitchen table, with her guidance, we landed on what we feel is the perfect addition to our centenary offering.

The process of becoming: embroidery samples tested on fabric, the logo finding its position, and a first fitting to sense how it would sit on the body. Every detail was considered before a single stitch was committed to the final cloth.

The Apron

The apron finds its first public moment: worn at the Londolozi x Assouline launch in London, carrying a little of Londolozi into a room full of people gathered to celebrate a hundred years of this place and its story.

Although I did not hand-stitch the aprons myself, I was involved in their journey intimately, from the first phone call to Diane to the finished product now resting on the shelves of the Living Boutique. Seeing them come to life was a quietly rewarding thing.

These two photographs below were taken in the same place, five years apart. The one on the left marks the very beginning of my Londolozi journey, in 2021. The one on the right, the finished apron worn for the first time, taken in the spirit of pride in the process and the product, a moment I wanted to hold onto.

Putting them side by side, and sitting with all that has unfolded in the years between them, brought on something I can only describe as a nostalgic reflection, the particular kind that arrives once a year, uninvited and welcome all at once. A conscious pause. A quiet accounting of people and place. And at the end of it, something that settles in the chest as gratitude.

Two photographs, five years apart. Will Ford and I, same place, different chapter.

As the Varty family and the Londolozi community at large take this centennial year as a moment to celebrate, reflect, and give thanks, it brings the team at the Living Boutique the greatest joy to produce tangible objects that carry all of that meaning, things you can hold in your hands and hang on a hook and return to.

The Londolozi 100th Apron will hang on cabinet doors and kitchen hooks for years to come. It will bear witness to meals prepared and meals shared, to the small ceremonies of welcome that happen quietly, the ones you may not even realise are taking place. Much like the centenary candle before it, it will extend beyond its practical role and hold something more: care, continuity, and a hundred years of understanding that the people you choose to work with matter as much as the work itself.

The apron’s first outing: New Year’s Eve 2025 at Londolozi, Champagne in hand, a hundred years almost within reach. The apron’s first outing: New Year’s Eve 2025 at Londolozi, Champagne in hand, a hundred years almost within reach.

A garment woven from relationships. From a conversation between old friends. From a phone call made on instinct. From tea at a kitchen table. From a century of knowing that the most enduring things are never the grandest ones, but the most carefully made.

Given the nature of Diane’s production and our intention to produce mindfully, quantities of the Londolozi 100th Apron are limited. If you would like us to set one aside for your next visit, please reach out to merchandise@londolozi.co.za.

The tranquil setting of the Londolozi Boutique and Photography Studio