CoolTabs is a handcrafted jewellery brand, based at Watershed, Cape Town, where recycling meets conscious design and every tab becomes something new to wear.

CONCEPT

A visual exploration bridging African identity with Western urban aesthetics.
At its core: a necklace handwoven from soda can tabs. Seemingly fragile, it becomes a symbol of strength, belonging, and transformation.

This series explores the body as a shared landscape, layered with culture, memory, and material contradiction.
Raw materials become adornment; craftsmanship meets editorial imagination; Africa weaves through the West. It’s a living tension between sacred and industrial, between ancestral techniques and city grit.
The result is a visual narrative that pulses and takes up space.

OUTCOME

A creative direction carved in polished onyx skin, urban settings sculpted by light, and accessories that feel like contemporary armour—light as mesh. The styling is raw, monochromatic, rooted in a metropolitan aesthetic with an underground cinematic cut. The project unfolds through photography, still life, AI-generated visuals, and motion animations, with a cold, intense palette: oxidised green, concrete, burnished copper, and silent metal. A visual system that pulses between physical presence and digital matter.