He Chopped Off His 7 Year Long Locs

So one of our subscribers, Dladla brought this amazing story to our attention & we couldn’t help but ask Maque to be featured here on FroChic.

So Maque cut his 7 year long locs recently. Bonang fela:

and now it’s all gone:

Having chopped my locs after 5 years I know the question he has to endure for the next few years is “Why?”…”Why?”  & more “Why?”‘s to a point of guilt. lol

So we caught up with him:

Origins & current location?

I am from a small town called Mokopane (Potgietersrus) in Limpopo, I moved to Cape Town for 4.5 years in my late teens and now I am based in Johannesburg – been here since 2009, Love it!

Tell us more about your blog, Maque deGorgeous, what do you blog about?

Maque DeGorgeous, more than anything, is a celebration of South African Fashion Designers, the “vortex” of the Fashion scene of Africa. I have attended numerous Fashion Shows and the standard of work presented by our Fashion Designers is amazing and it is a shame that not everybody, in the country, is familiar with our designers.

Maque DeGorgeous also has a social aspect – I discuss some of the events I attend, usually where fashion forms the focal point.

I see you talk a lot about fashion on your blog, so who are some of you favourite designers?

I hate answering this question because I measure designers by their last collection. So my “favourite designer” is very seasonal; I will love whoever speaks my language with their collection. But the designers who have consistently spoken Maque-nese are David Tlale, Kluk CGDT, Black Coffee, Heni and Suzaan Heyns.

My calculations say  you’ve grown your locs since 2003; right? Were you natural before then?

My hair has a tale of it’s own. It’s journey of experimenting started in January 2001 when I ditched my mother’s dictation of “chico style” (german haircut?) to try dredlocks. It took forever for my hair to “loc” because the texture was too soft and whatever crazy reasons I got from friends who were trying the dry towel twist method. I eventually went to a hair salon where, hours later I got what resembled dredlocks – it was an Afrodred which was very unpopular then and i received many confused compliments.

Later that year (2001), around November, I undid the unloc’d dreds (but i lost some hair undoing this) and had a lovely afro for about a month. My damaged hair then allowed me to see-saw from dredlocks to afro as often as possible and that was what happend till about mid-June 2002 when i eventually settled for dredlocks.. phew!

Why dreadlocks?

Did you see how Vusi Twala and Brown Matsime (RIP) used to flick their hair? I also wanted to give myself whiplash! LOL!

On a serious note though: it was the natural prgression from what I had. Plaits and heavy chemicals were not my thing

 What was the most challenging stage in growing them?

The”too short to do a pony” and “too long to leave them haning” stage – annoyed me immensely! plus I have thick hair so it was very unruly. That and also getting started – took weeks to get them to look presentable.

What does one need to get to that length you had just before you cut them off?

Patience! Patience and hairstyle ideas to suite your length – anything unusual made me love my hair even more.

Now the big question (i’m sure you’re pretty tired of answering this one). Why the BIG CHOP?

7.5 years showed absolutely no progress in my life in terms of “new look” and creativity. I wanted to experiment with new hairstyles and the longer my hair got, the more limited the styles got.

Will you consider growing them back?

Growing? LOL! I kept my hair for a reason. I will weave it back on should i ever feel the need (its self grown so no one should judge me!) – but I have temporarily “borrowed” them to someone. Keep an eye on my blog for this…

For what it’s worth, you look just as great with that TWA.

Check out Maque’s NEW LOOK‘s  full story on his blog, maquedegorgeous.blogspot.com