Donna-Lee does all of this with an original vision, inventing her own articulation of style influenced from growing up in the neighbourhood of Bonteheuwel, Cape Town. At Lemkus, we have made it a central commitment of ours to highlight the creative way showers across the vast tapestry of cultures and contexts within the city. So, we couldn’t think of a more powerful representative for Nike Footscape than Donna-Lee, a stylist who stands at the intersection of culture, creativity and impact.  

The Footscape concept has been part of Nike’s journey since the 1990s to showcase unconventional attitudes with ergonomic design. A distinctive asymmetrical lacing and sole unit serve to mimic the natural motion of the wearer’s foot, while the continually updated colourways and fabrications seed Nike Footscape as one of the most unrivalled sneakers in the world. The Footscape Woven was first created in 2006 and has returned in a faux-fur cow printing, blending the highly-refined sneaker silhouette with textured references from the natural world. 

“I always loved fashion as a young girl. I loved getting dressed up with my cousins, or wearing my mom’s pieces. I had no idea that being a stylist was a possibility. I studied business administration and one thing led to another during my internship, and I was introduced to a buyer in the buying department. That opened my understanding of how I might be able to explore fashion as a career with the skill sets that I had from my studies.”

Creative careers have only started being serious pathways in the last two decades. Even still, the route to being a stylist is not something that is offered as a degree within South Africa’s school system. For Donna, the road to realising her career came out of many chance meetings, saying “I didn’t have the fashion qualifications or experience to get a job immediately, so I took quite a complicated route that started in a call centre. First at Takealot and then at Superbalist. At Superbalist, the call centre shared a floor with the editorial department and I was so curious - I would go for a few too many bathroom breaks just to glimpse what they were doing, or hope that someone saw what I was wearing!”

It takes time to build a vision and then apply that vision within a landscape of opportunities. Getting one's foot in the door for creatives often means building a portfolio out of love, sweat and tears. Donna reminisces on the earlier challenges coming up in South African fashion, “my career started out with a lot of challenges. Freelancing isn’t easy, and to build a portfolio you need to work for free. I did a lot of small projects, assisting work and passion projects. It built my character, though. I think when you love something so much, the way I love fashion, you have to find the willingness to be tested in so many ways. There’s so much for us to learn constantly and I am still developing so much as a stylist, but I wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

Donna’s approach to styling arises out of storytelling. This ability, to tell stories, is what marks her as one of South Africa’s most visionary sartorial storytellers, a process that she explains, “I love character development. Especially for TV commercials, I focus on building characters, giving them names and stories for each of the talent that we will need to dress. It helps the character come alive and when I understand who they are in my mind, then styling becomes a way to express who they can be within the commercial or campaign. I have a whole process! I give them a look and feel, their own world, their own story. This process feeds my soul and allows a lot of my creativity to be channelled into whatever the project is.”

We knew in building the Footscape story Donna-Lee that we had to go back to her roots. Despite the historical, socio-economic challenges that are the backdrop to the Cape Flats; this area of Cape Town is also one of the most enlivened, community-driven areas, containing the power of the human spirit and unbridled creativity.

With her future as an example of what is possible - that creativity has the power to be a recourse for better days - Donna explains that, “many of the kids I grew up with have gone in a different direction than they could have gone for different reasons. Gangsters have their arms wide-open for these kids, but I see a brighter future for them. There’s so much potential in Bonteheuwel. If I am able to seek better things and dream bigger, then I think those of us who grew up in Cape Flats communities can show that there are greater possibilities.”

With her future as an example of what is possible - that creativity has the power to be a recourse for better days - Donna explains that, “many of the kids I grew up with have gone in a different direction than they could have gone for different reasons. Gangsters have their arms wide-open for these kids, but I see a brighter future for them. There’s so much potential in Bonteheuwel. If I am able to seek better things and dream bigger, then I think those of us who grew up in Cape Flats communities can show that there are greater possibilities.”