Submitted by Woodrock Animal Rescue
Although fashion and animal rescue may seem like unlikely companions, both can be about seeing value where others no longer do.
There’s something fascinating about watching a person take everything they know from one world and using it to make a difference in another – especially when those two worlds seem, at first, to have very little in common.
Style and substance
Craig Jacobs knows fashion.
He knows the front row, the runway, the personalities and the relentless rhythm of an industry built around what comes next.
He’s a journalist and columnist, a communicator, and the creative force behind Fundudzi, the fashion label he founded in 2004 built around the ethos of conscious design. His career has taken him through newsrooms, fashion circles and onto some of the most recognised runways. But somewhere along that journey, another conversation became increasingly difficult to ignore.
He started questioning: What happens to everything we no longer want?
For Craig, a discarded garment can still have a story ahead of it. At Woodrock, an animal who’s been cast aside by someone else does too.
Where fashion meets animal welfare
Clothing has a life before we wear it. It also has a life after we no longer need it. And that’s where Craig’s world began to intersect so naturally with ours at Woodrock Animal Rescue – a place built around the belief that no animal should be discarded simply because it’s no longer wanted.
Woodrock welcomed Craig into its thrifting space because he brought something quite different to the table.
Intimate knowledge of the rag trade and an understanding that a discarded garment doesn’t necessarily represent the end of something. In the right hands, it can represent a beginning. Just like an animal who no longer is wanted can still have an opportunity at a life of love.
For an animal rescue organisation, thrifting has an obvious purpose. Pre-loved goods generate desperately needed income that can be redirected towards welfare. But there’s another story sitting quietly behind every rail of clothing: repurposing matters.
Beyond the bargain
Every garment given another life is one less item unnecessarily discarded. Every person who chooses pre-loved rather than automatically buying new participates, however modestly, in a different way of consuming. Thrifting stops being simply about finding a bargain. It becomes part of a much bigger conversation about waste, consumption and our responsibility towards the planet.
Craig understood that language immediately.
His label, Fundudzi, has long explored conscious design, existing textiles, natural fibres and more considered ways of producing clothing. His philosophy challenges one of fashion’s most deeply ingrained ideas: that something must be new to have value.
Then came a remarkable meeting of these worlds.
A new life on the runway
For his return to South African Fashion Week in 2026, Craig presented “There Is Nothing New Under the Sun” – a collection that looked backwards in order to say something about the future.
Archival fabrics, offcuts, existing garments and deadstock were reconsidered and reworked. Even the accessories carried the philosophy onto the runway: pre-loved pieces were sourced from Woodrock Animal Rescue’s new thrift store at Byron Thomas Properties’ Parkwood office.
Something once owned. Something no longer wanted. Something handed over to an animal rescue organisation. And then, instead of being forgotten or discarded, something chosen again – this time to walk beneath the lights of the major runway at South African Fashion Week. That is repurposing with a story.
More than a style choice
But perhaps the most interesting transformation hasn’t been the clothing. It’s been watching a man so deeply embedded in the world of fashion that media and A-listers increasingly use that experience to speak about something much less glamorous: waste, overconsumption, landfills, welfare and responsibility.
There’s no contradiction in those worlds. In fact, there’s a powerful connection between them. Animal welfare teaches us not to discard a life simply because it’s become inconvenient. Responsible fashion asks us to reconsider the same disposable mentality towards the things we consume.
Both ask us to look again.
From rag trade to rescue
At Woodrock, we see it every day: something overlooked can still have enormous value. An older animal. A frightened animal. Or a garment hanging quietly on a thrift-store rail. None should automatically be defined by the fact that somebody else no longer wanted them.
That’s why Craig Jacobs’ involvement has become about considerably more than fashion. He brings knowledge. He brings an understanding of textiles, presentation and reinvention. But, importantly, he brings a voice capable of connecting audiences that might never ordinarily meet: the fashion-conscious consumer, the environmental conversation and the world of animal rescue.
From the rag trade to rescue.
From discarded to desirable.
From runway to repurpose.
Because when we repurpose, we interrupt the cycle of buy, use, discard. When we thrift, we extend the lifespan of what already exists. When those proceeds support animal welfare, one act of reuse does two jobs: reducing unnecessary waste while helping sustain the lives that depend upon organisations such as Woodrock next.
And a thrift shop doesn’t have to remain simply a thrift shop.
In the hands of someone prepared to see possibility where others see waste, yesterday can be cut, reshaped, reimagined and sent confidently back out into the world.
