AYANA presents “Sunday Best” — A celebration of memory, womanhood, and storytelling

AYANA’s latest creative collaboration, Sunday Best, is an intimate ode to South African womanhood, memory, and the moments that shape us. The project, led by Creative Director Bee Diamondhead and captured through the warm lens of photographer Niquita Bento, is part of AYANA’s ongoing mission to provide space for South African creatives to tell stories with honesty, intention, and cultural depth.

Creative Director: Bee Diamondhead. Photographer: Niquita Bento

At its core, Sunday Best is Diamondhead’s cinematic, nostalgic reflection on family, childhood, and the quiet rituals that define life in South Africa. “It’s about women who carry the weight of beauty and resilience in the same breath,” she explains. “About how style, in our culture, has always been a form of love, for ourselves, for our families, for where we come from.”

fashion

AYANA: Purposeful Style, Powerful Presence

The visual narrative is rooted in memory: siblings dressing up on Sunday mornings, mothers fixing collars, cousins arriving in matching outfits, laughter spilling into the streets, and music drifting across neighbourhoods. These familiar gestures form a tapestry of nostalgia, reflecting Diamondhead’s own journey from grassroots township life in Zimbabwe to middle-class South Africa. “Those moments of movement, unity, and becoming have stayed with me, and they’re the emotional thread running through this project,” she says.

Diamondhead’s memories of South African womanhood are layered with sensory detail: the sounds, textures, and smells of different homes and neighborhoods. “I immediately think of resilience woven through deep softness,” she notes. “South African women have always been the ones who carry family, the custodians of tradition, the ones who feed us, clothe us, guide us, and hold the centre. I pulled from all those sensory memories to build a visual story that honours the strength, tenderness, and everyday magic of South African womanhood.”

Stepping away from commercial expectations allowed Diamondhead to create without compromise. “Even though the client was always top of mind, I was fortunate that they trusted my vision completely. That trust allowed me to create with emotion rather than metrics,” she says. Her focus on sisterhood, generosity, and the quiet support women provide one another forms a central theme of Sunday Best: “So often women are framed as being in competition, but that’s never been my lived experience. That instinct to hold each other up feels like such a true part of South African girlhood and motherhood.”

Collaboration played a key role in shaping the project’s tone. On working with Bento, Diamondhead shares, “Working with Niquita feels like our brains are connected… we instinctively understand the emotional intention behind the work. Choosing her was a no-brainer. Her presence shaped the tone and sensitivity of the project in the most beautiful way.”

For AYANA, Sunday Best exemplifies the brand’s mission of creating space for creatives. “Bee Diamondhead was not asked to execute a concept, she was asked to dream, to remember, and to shape a story rooted in her own lived experiences,” explains the AYANA team. “What emerged is a deeply personal and culturally resonant project that honours South African memory, womanhood, and the rituals we grew up with. It’s creativity led by heart, not constraint.”

Unlike typical fashion collaborations focused on product, Sunday Best prioritizes emotion, identity, and cultural storytelling. “Instead of asking, ‘How can we show the clothes?’ AYANA asked, ‘What story can we tell, and how can creativity lead the way?’” Diamondhead notes. The project uses fashion as a narrative tool, celebrating lived experience over consumption.

Ultimately, AYANA hopes Sunday Best sparks reflection and connection. “It’s a reminder of where we come from and the small, intimate gestures that shaped us,” Diamondhead concludes. “More than anything, we hope people feel a sense of connection, to themselves, to their communities, and to the collective memory we all share.”

Sunday Best is now live, inviting South Africans to pause, remember, and honour the beauty, depth, and cultural richness that define their everyday lives.