Merchants on Long

Opened in 2010 by Hanneli Rupert inside the art-nouveau T. Gibson building on Long Street, Merchants on Long set out to do something no one had done before in Africa: curate the continent's best designers under one luxury roof. Terracotta arches, original stone walls quarried from Table Mountain, and a great mahogany counter house rails of Thebe Magugu, Sindiso Khumalo, Lukhanyo Mdingi, Rich Mnisi, MaXhosa Africa, and Kenneth Ize alongside emerging labels from Lagos, Nairobi, Accra, and Bamako. More than a shop, it became a cultural switchboard for the African luxury conversation that boutiques from Lagos to London now plug into.