There are fashion shows, and then there are experiences that ask you to reconsider what the runway is actually for.
At Pere House in Midrand, Malondié’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Power of She, did exactly that. Staged in partnership with Vaseline Cera-Glow, the experience brought together fashion, skincare, culture, and self-expression around a deceptively simple idea: glow is not just something you wear. It is something you embody.
Running from 11am to 5pm, the SS26 Fashion Experience transformed the conventional runway into an immersive brand and fashion moment, with Vaseline Cera-Glow taking center stage as Title Partner.
For Vaseline Cera-Glow’s Experiential Lead, Andiswa Mtshali, bringing the experience to life was a project defined as much by what happened behind the scenes as what audiences ultimately saw.
“There were A LOT of moving parts, late nights, conversations, creative pivots, and behind-the-scenes moments with the incredible Malondié team,” she reflected. “But we pulled it off, and what an experience it was.”
That experience was the result of a partnership that had already proven its cultural potential.
From Collaboration to Title Partnership
The relationship between Malondié and Vaseline Cera-Glow began with the designer’s SS25 launch in August 2025, themed We Are the Fruits of Where We Come From and inspired by the isigege, the traditional Zulu maiden skirt.
That first collaboration brought together fashion, heritage and skincare in a distinctly South African expression of beauty. Coverage from Hello Lifestyle Magazine and Scene Feed captured the colourful, culturally rooted showcase and its blend of local fashion, beauty and entertainment.
A year later, the partnership returned with a considerably bigger ambition.
This time, Vaseline Cera-Glow stepped up as the Title Partner of Malondié SS26.
The progression says something about where experiential marketing is heading: brands are increasingly moving beyond product placement and asking how they can become part of the cultural world their audiences already care about.
For SS26, the answer was skin styling.
When Skin Becomes the First Layer
Malondié founder Londeka Buthelezi-Ndaba envisioned Power of She as more than a traditional fashion presentation. The collection was built around presence, premium femininity and the different ways women show up and shine, drawing emotional inspiration from childhood memories, the women who raised her, sunlight and the imagery of the firefly.
In an interview with IOL, Buthelezi-Ndaba spoke about the thinking behind the collection and the reality of building a luxury fashion brand, emphasising that creativity alone is not enough.
Vaseline Cera-Glow extended that philosophy beyond the clothing.
The central idea was that skin is the first garment a woman puts on. Before the dress, before the accessories and before the styling, there is skin.
Guests encountered bespoke Cera-Glow installations, interactive skin-preparation experiences and dedicated spaces designed for glow-focused content and photography. Buzz Life News’ coverage of the showcase highlighted the role of the Cera-Glow range and the immersive elements built around the brand.
Instead of asking audiences to stop and look at a product, the activation invited them to experience the brand’s world. The runway itself continued the conversation between skin and fashion through five exclusive looks co-curated specifically with Vaseline Cera-Glow. The garments were designed to create a visual bridge between fabric and radiant skin, reinforcing the idea that glowing skin could be considered part of the styling process itself. The concept was highlighted in Zkhiphani’s coverage of the showcase, which explored the collaboration and the role of Vaseline Cera-Glow within the SS26 fashion experience. The result was a runway where the relationship between beauty and fashion felt deliberately blurred. The clothes did not exist in isolation from the skin. The skin did not exist separately from the clothes. Together, they formed one visual language.
And that was precisely the point.
A Full Sensory Experience
The experience extended well beyond the garments.
Zkhiphani’s preview of the experience positioned the host as part of a wider celebration of South African creative talent. Hair was handled by Londie London Hair Studio, while music from DJ Mbali Nkosi and a set by Londie London added another layer to the afternoon. The guest list brought together celebrities, media personalities, creators, and fashion tastemakers, with actress and media personality Gugu Gumede among the moments that captured attention on the day. Then there were the details that made the activation feel distinctly Cera-Glow: the installations, the Glow Dolls, the content moments, and, of course, the unexpected Gugu Gumede moment that became one of the day’s memorable highlights.
The People Behind the Glow
Experiences of this scale rarely come together through one team alone.
Mtshali credits her manager, Boipelo Keneilwe Mekgwe (MMDB), and Business Group Director Tamryn Taylor for their support, guidance and belief in the vision throughout the process. The company also acknowledges the wider Vaseline team: the people working behind the scenes to keep the brand culturally relevant and desirable and continually finding new ways to bring its #FollowTheGlow platform to life.
Simunye Media played a key role in bringing the activation to life, while Ogilvy PR and Social helped extend the story beyond the physical experience through content creator selection and management, content creation, and amplification.
It is this network of brand, agency, creative, and production teams that ultimately turns an idea into something an audience can actually feel. And in experiential marketing, that distinction is everything.
Why the Partnership Works
At its strongest, the Malondié x Vaseline Cera-Glow partnership demonstrates what can happen when a brand enters culture with something meaningful to contribute. Malondié brought fashion, design, femininity, and a distinctly South African creative perspective. Vaseline Cera-Glow brought skincare, radiance, and its own proposition around healthy-looking skin and barrier care. Rather than competing for attention, the two worlds were given a shared narrative.
That narrative was particularly resonant during Women’s Month, when Power of She was unveiled. For Buthelezi-Ndaba, the idea of “she” speaks to the strength, resilience, and individuality of women, while encouraging them to follow their own glow rather than dim themselves for someone else. The partnership translated that idea into an environment people could physically walk into.
A Show Built Around Glow, Not Just Garments
This wasn’t Malondié’s first dance with Vaseline Cera-Glow. The two brands first joined forces a year earlier, for Malondié’s SS25 launch on 30 August 2025, a show themed “We are the fruits of where we come from” and inspired by the isigege, the traditional Zulu maiden skirt. That collaboration was, by all accounts, a hit: colourful, culturally rooted, and dense with local star power, as Hello Lifestyle Magazine and Scene Feed both documented at the time. Vaseline Cera-Glow’s team has pointed to the success of that first outing as the reason they came back for round two, this time stepping up as SS26’s title sponsor.
The 2026 edition pushed the concept further. Rather than a conventional runway presentation, organisers built an immersive experience around the idea of “skin styling,” the notion that healthy, nourished, radiant skin is a styling decision in its own right, layered on before a single stitch of fabric goes on. According to Buzz Life News, Vaseline Cera-Glow was cast deliberately as a kind of stylist: the range is formulated around Pro Ceramides, ingredients positioned to help skin rebuild its own ceramide barrier for a healthy looking glow, and marketed as suited to every skin type and tone. Guests moved through bespoke Cera-Glow installations and interactive skin prep stations, with dedicated spots built for glow focused content and photography.
Five Looks, One Shared Vision
The runway centred Malondié’s SS26 line, described by the brand as built around presence, premium femininity and the many ways a modern woman shows up and shines. Woven through the main collection were five exclusive looks co curated specifically with Vaseline Cera-Glow, garments designed, according to Zkhiphani, to visually bridge fabric and radiant skin, treating a glowing complexion as the season’s true finishing accessory.
Buthelezi-Ndaba told IOL she wanted the SS26 reveal to feel less like a traditional show and more like stepping into a world before the first look even appears, a collection with, in her words, a strong emotional and visual story built around light, radiance and femininity. That instinct traces back to something personal: she’s cited childhood memories and the women who raised her as part of the collection’s emotional DNA, alongside imagery of the sun and the firefly.
Pamela Mtanga Takes the Mic
Hosting duties went to Pamela Mtanga, the media personality known across the continent for her own effortlessly radiant presence, a fitting match for a show built on the idea that glow is a philosophy as much as a skincare routine. Mtanga told Zkhiphani that being part of a partnership celebrating South African talent made her incredibly proud as a Black South African woman, framing her role at the showcase as a celebration of local creative excellence backed by real corporate investment.
Hair, Sound and the Full Sensory Package
Londie London Hair Studio handled hair for the models, with the results drawing enthusiastic praise online for their precision across every single look. The experience also had a live soundtrack, with Buzz Life News reporting performances from DJ Mbali Nkosi and a set from Londie London herself rounding out the afternoon.
The guest list pulled in South African celebrities, media figures and fashion industry tastemakers, with actress and media personality Gugu Gumede among those drawing attention on the day.
The Sponsors Behind the Story
Beyond headline sponsor Vaseline Cera-Glow, Malondié credited a wider circle of partners for bringing SS26 to life: MAC Cosmetics, Brutal Fruit Spritzer, Londie London Hair Studio, W&RSETA, venue partner Pere House, and BYD Bryanston.
Where the Story Started
For Buthelezi-Ndaba, Power of She isn’t only a Women’s Month campaign moment, though the timing, unveiled in August, South Africa’s Women’s Month, is not incidental. In her IOL interview, she framed the Vaseline Cera-Glow partnership as resting on a shared idea: that of “she,” the strength and resilience carried by women, and the encouragement to follow one’s own glow rather than dim it for anyone else’s comfort.
It’s a message she has said she hopes lands with real weight: that behind every collection sits a mess of business decisions, resilience and sacrifice that rarely makes it to the runway, and that building Malondié has demanded far more than creative talent alone.
By the time the last model had walked and the last flash had gone off at Pere House, the through line of the afternoon was hard to miss. On Malondié’s SS26 runway, the glow came first, and the clothes were only ever the second layer.
The Partnership Continues
Beyond Vaseline Cera-Glow, the SS26 experience brought together an extended group of partners, including MAC Cosmetics, Brutal Fruit Spritzer, Londie London Hair Studio, W&RSETA, venue partner Pere House and BYD Bryanston.
Together, they contributed to an afternoon that positioned Malondié not simply as a fashion label presenting a new collection, but as a growing cultural platform capable of bringing multiple creative industries into the same room.
For the teams behind the experience, that is perhaps the most rewarding part.
The runway may have lasted an afternoon.
The work behind it took much longer.
And the story created between Malondié and Vaseline Cera-Glow now has another chapter.
From the first collaboration in 2025 to a Title Partnership in 2026, the relationship has evolved from a fashion-and-skincare collaboration into something much more ambitious: a shared cultural experience built around the idea that every woman gets to define what her own glow looks like.
And if SS26 is anything to go by, this partnership is only getting started.
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