with a reputation for being one of the funkiest guys around, Seth Mostert will not mind when people stare at him at the Vodacom Durban July.
He will be wearing a real head-turner this year… a suit made from ticking, the material that mattresses were made out of in a bygone era.
Then, there is that special tattoo art hair style and the reflector light rings – and the dragon wrapped around the suit.
The 20-year-old photography student, with a flair for fashion, turned to multi award-winning Durban designer Karen Monk-Klijnstra for the outfit.
Monk-Klijnstra is dressing countless racegoers for the famous race and she will be the first to admit that people give her a call when they want something outrageous and over-the-top.
She loves the theme of this year’s race – “A Material World” – and feels people have not taken it to the heights it could have been taken to.
“The theme is all about recycling and repurposing. I could just keep going with the theme for another three weeks,” she said on Wednsday.
“Seth is one of the funkiest guys I know and is a very talented photographer. He is very interested in fashion with a sense of the street.”
The designer got the mattress ticking from a shop at the Hillcrest Aids Centre, and when she had made the suit two weeks later, she added vintage buttons.
In keeping with “A Material World”, she settled for a dragon on the suit, which is representative of China, where the world’s material comes from.
Durban artist Steve Mandy, who paints directly on to fabric, fashioned the colourful dragon onto a knit material and yesterday Monk-Klijnstra began positioning it in place on the suit.
The dragon’s tail will be extended down a trouser leg.
She would applique the dragon into position with wool using blanket stitch to give the outfit a bit of texture, she said.
Mostert said he loved the idea of the Chinese influence of the dragon so much, that he went off to Gateway, where barber Kuben Chinnapen gave his hair a rather unique Chinese look.