Using the second phase of a two-year-long project called the Drum Magazine Project as a case study, this paper responds to how we can address cultural pride and preservation of uniqueness in a globalised world. Drawing inspiration from the landmark South African magazine, the project embarked on a process of teaching South African fashion history through archives from this magazine. Building on the first phase’s focus on the 1950s and 1960s, the second phase included students working with theories of translocality (Hughes 2022) and the ‘Afro’ fashion look (Ford 2015) to study 1970s fashion in Johannesburg as an expression of translocal subjectivities.

In this paper, I respond to the sub-question about the extent to which design educators can incorporate our context and knowledge of Africa into our design disciplines. I provide an example of a socially-engaged design project from a fashion department at a South African University of Technology (UoT) in which second-year fashion students participated. I argue that this project can be framed as an example of critical citizenship education as forwarded by Johnson and Morris (2010). I also grapple with how a diverse student body can be prepared for a design project that perceives the transformation of society as an end.