RAWFACTORY is an address before it is an event. It is a concrete and glass hangar in south-east Amsterdam, designed by OMA, where G-STAR keeps its head office.
In January the brand brought the Arc jean back there for FW26. This season the name leaves the building. G-STAR is staging RAW FACTORY in South Africa for the first time, a platform built around women in music, fashion and design, with Uncle Waffles headlining. It anchors the relaunch of G-STAR womenswear and the return of the Arc, the jean whose twisted inseams and outseams wrap the leg into a curve.
The event is the announcement. The local campaign is the news.
A Global Story, Retold Locally
Own the Arc belongs to Charlotte de Witte, who climbs the Arc de Triomphe in black and white as G-STAR’s new global ambassador. In most markets that film would simply be the campaign. In South Africa the brand has asked for a second version. The founder of Manor Africa, an award-winning visual artist and creative director, has reinterpreted it from an African perspective, with Desiree and Uncle Waffles in the frame.
That is rarer than it sounds. Global campaigns usually reach this market as finished assets that have been resized, relabelled and pushed through local channels. Commissioning a new image means accepting that the story might come back different. It treats South Africa as a place that can author a campaign rather than receive one.
Cut for a Different Body
The clothes are making a parallel argument. The relaunched women’s line starts from G-STAR’s raw denim and utility tailoring, then recuts it with closer attention to female fit and proportion, pairing engineered denim with sculpted silhouettes and softer fabrics. A women’s range can be built by grading down a men’s block. Starting from a jean defined by where its seam travels suggests the work is happening at the pattern table and not just in the lookbook.
No Borrowed Blueprint
Uncle Waffles comes to the same idea from a different direction. Born Lungelihle Zwane in Eswatini, she taught herself to DJ during the 2020 lockdowns. Within two years she held a BBC Radio 1 residency, and a BET nomination followed. De Witte built her career on her own label. Uncle Waffles built hers on amapiano, a sound that travelled out of South Africa on its own terms, which makes her an obvious choice to headline a platform about women setting their own course.
The Arc and the new women’s denim are available at g-star.com, BASH, Superbalist, Vault on Bree and G-STAR stores nationwide.
The name started on a building in Amsterdam. The story is now being told from here.
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