Glamour SA held its anticipated 2026 awards for Mzansi’s Best Female Ambassadors
Reading Time: 2 minutesGlamour SA held its prestigious awards event recently. Damatria Ntintili reflects on the day. Read about what she took from the event.
Images Source: Damatria Ntintili
Glamour and activism can go hand-in-hand.
I walked into the GLAMOUR South Africa Awards expecting to celebrate excellence. I walked out questioning why we continue to confine advocacy to boardrooms, parliaments and protest lines.
The moment that stayed with me wasn’t a celebrity acceptance speech. It was watching fashion sustainability advocate Tracy-Lee Rosslind receive an award. Her recognition challenged an assumption I didn’t realize I still carried: that advocacy belongs in “serious” spaces, while glamour belongs to entertainment.
Image Source: Tracy-Lee Rosslind’s Facebook Page
Fashion and glamour shaping culture
Why have we convinced ourselves these worlds are incompatible?
A runway can spark conversations just as powerfully as a parliamentary debate.
damatria ntintili – youth express
Fashion is one of the world’s most influential industries. It shapes culture before policy catches up, influencing what we buy, what we value and whose stories are amplified. Yet it is also an industry with significant environmental and social consequences.
If fashion has the power to shape consumer behaviour, then it also has the power to shape social change.
Advocacy with a hint of glamour
Perhaps our understanding of activism is too narrow.
We often recognize advocacy only when it is loud, political or confrontational.
In doing so, we overlook the quieter revolutions taking place in creative industries, where influence can shift public attitudes long before legislation does.
As someone committed to youth, education and climate advocacy, the awards challenged my own thinking. I realized that impact is not determined by the setting but by the intention behind the work.
A runway can spark conversations just as powerfully as a parliamentary debate.
Every profession drives change
The evening reminded me that advocacy is not about occupying traditional spaces – it is about transforming the spaces we already have. If sustainability can stand proudly beside style, then perhaps every profession has the capacity to drive change.
Maybe the question is no longer where advocacy belongs.
Maybe the real question is why we ever believed it belonged anywhere else?
