I came across Cleo Droomer’s work for the first time when I walked into our factory one morning, greeted by a rail carrying ten-or-so artisanal-looking jackets: sewn-together bundles of organic hues, arranged into panels and held together by meticulous stitching, evidence that these garments were once under the care of thoughtful hands. Then I was introduced formally — Daniel and Erin spoke of Cleo and his name-sake brainchild, Droomer, in a mystically high regard, outlining his history as a promising young designer, turned industry insider, turned mindful upcycler and maker. I imagined an enlightened man, disgruntled with and self-exiled from the unsanctimonious landscape of the fashion industry, now walking a wise path of independence.
I was excited to meet Cleo to see whether any of my fantasies were accurate. Adding to his mystique, he seemed hesitant about my request for a Zoom interview. I understood his urge to opt for email correspondence when he revealed to me later that previous interviewers have misconstrued his words. More than with most designers that I’ve come across, it would be a grave injustice to miss out on the sincerity with which Cleo explains Droomer and its important ideological foundations. Thanks to a couple of my puppy-eyed voice messages, though, Cleo finally agreed to have a chat with me over Zoom. I felt honoured by his trust, and nervous about the interview. I knew little about him besides what I’d read elsewhere. What if he was actually just shy?
Cleo joined the meeting from Makhanda in the Eastern Cape, where his partner of three years, Dylan McGarry teaches at Rhodes University’s Environmental Learning Research Centre while he works in solitude in the decadently large studio in their house. His refuge in his workspace in the mountains, far from unruly big city life, contributed to the hermitic vision I’d formed of the man in my head. But when we started speaking, Cleo was everything besides the withdrawn character I’d imagined. He was thoughtfully engaging, gentle and interested. Not only with me, but seemingly with every story and subject that crosses his path. Without asking, Cleo told me an in-depth history of the house he was calling from: a near 200-year-old heritage home built by the Grocott family, English settlers who had moved down in the 1820s and operated South Africa’s first ever independent newspaper from the room that he was sitting in. The same considerate intellectual approach is evident in how he talks about his own life and journey with his making process.
“Understanding my place in society and in a community has been a lifelong journey, separate from vocation,” said Cleo, but through his departure from the rat race of corporate fashion and the isolation of COVID lockdowns, he started to realise the deep connection between his thinking around history, identity and belonging, and his practice. Cleo grew up with an innate sense for academic enquiry, but without the guidance of institutional curricula, he didn’t have the vocabulary to properly explore the concepts that he had naturally been investigating until he started a new phase of intensive self-study. He thanks Dylan for exposing him to key thinkers around post-humanism, decoloniality and relationality who have deepened his relationship with his work. He felt a familiarity with these texts — in his words, they have always been “inside me”. For Cleo, Droomer is a catharsis, his way of expressing his interpretations of these ideas.
Through Droomer, Cleo is making the connections between his heritage and his research. The name itself, Droomer, found its way to Cleo via a Dutch paternal great grandfather who settled in South Africa in the 19th century, but as the story goes, the name was originally given to a mysterious illiterate Sephardic Jewish man in the Netherlands for his resemblance to biblical character Joseph the Dreamer. In what now seems like a previous life, Cleo used his full name for the runway shows that he co-ordinated at SA Fashion Week. Since he’s become increasingly engrossed in his family history and context, according to Cleo, “it started a new conversation within myself around lineage and ancestry and how we name things.” What might seem like a trivial difference in naming has principal consequences for the foundations of his making process. “It’s quite a thing to have a brand be a namesake… an eponymous statement that says that you are the creative force behind the brand,” says Cleo, who I sense finds more transcendental duty in dropping his first name and emphasising Droomer as an ode to heritage and lineage.
“Droomer is a manifestation of the spiritual journey that I’ve been on, but it’s also an ongoing ancestral conversation,” said Cleo before telling me about the conversations, visitations and ethereal moments that he’s shared with his ancestors in his making and introspection. Cleo’s methodology is inherently dialogical, informing his intentions behind using discarded fabric scraps and inherited and found material. “I don’t like using the word sustainability. I prefer terms based around regenerativity. Regenerative thinking, for me, is like a conversation where we’re not speaking as much… it’s more a listening exercise. I make through listening to what really wants to be wielded into this world. I listen to the energy of the fabric discards and the remnants and the things we chuck away. What does it want to be? What does it want to be in this world now? Not about thinking that we constantly need to be making and doing. Rather just stepping back and listening.” Cleo’s garments look as if they are happy to be in the world, relieved that someone took the time to hear out their stories, contrasting the sad, plastic-looking clothes hanging anxiously and resistantly on the cold rails of large-scale retailers exploiting their existence for profit. “That petroleum did not want to be woven into polyester for us,” Cleo said chuckling.
The world, and especially the fashion industry, can benefit greatly from placing more value on the stories that want to be told. Only by trying to run a brand in the past, making collection after collection, did Cleo discover how unnatural the production process felt. There’s no time for listening when the mandate is forceful productivity and the pressure of rapid consumption. With Droomer, Cleo’s more concerned with “creating a community, a thought space, a sanctuary, not a brand, with responsible recipients.” Actioning a shift in the way the greater fashion industry thinks about making is a colossal task. “How do we push the factory reset button?”, asks Cleo, to which he has answers at the ready: engagement between policy makers and indigenous knowledge holders, “between people in power and thought that’s always been here.” My hope for Droomer is that people make the effort and resist the firm grip of consumerism to listen to the stories that Cleo’s garments are a medium for. This is why I think Duck Duck Goose is such an important home for Droomer and the kind of engagement that Cleo intends to normalise in fashion. Not only does it allow people to intimately experience the garments in-person, to feel and wear them and hear what they have to say, people can also converse about them with informed store staff in a comfortable setting.
A selection of Droomer’s ‘Droom Coats’ have quietly been introduced to 120 Bree Street since we reopened our doors in September of this year. The jackets, made from patches of upcycled, reworked and heirloom fabrics, feature wide, cropped silhouettes and string ties in place of buttons. “They’re coats to dream in”, says Cleo. While practical fashion is usually associated with utilitarian textiles and mechanical closures, the practicality of the Droom Coats lies in the way that they allow the wearer to be free to move in the world, void of anything unnecessary. By wearing Droomer, perhaps we could find it easier to dream of quieter new worlds, to step back and listen to the stories that want to be told.