Presenter, Actor, and all round entertainer, Raphael Griffiths is our ZAlebs crush of the week. Every week we aim to bringing you some of the finest (In terms of talent and eye candy!) local Celebs for our Crush of the Week Feature and we hope you share our sentiments each week, especially this one. We had a quick QA with the cutie, Raphael. Let’s see how it went down!
ZAlebs spotted you at the Redds Experience event sporting a very trendy African royalty attire. Did you design that outfit and what was the influence behind it we must say you were looking quite fresh? Why thank you and yes I got the inspiration from the attire that North African and Asian Princes wear, but my printed pants were inspired by the latest trends from South Korea at the moment, they have a very stylish street wear trend going on there. So I basically combined African and Korean style and added the turban hat to add a bit more style to the whole outfit.
Does your clothing/design label have a name yet, or are both you and your friend still just experimenting with the idea? At the moment we’re just playing with a few ideas, we really just having fun with a couple of fabrics with my design partner Thabo Punk. Nothing has really been confirmed I guess our creative ideas will be the judge of us venturing into the design industry as a profession, however I will mention that there’s a well-known designer in the country who has approached me to work with him on a street-wear brand with as well I can’t mention any names yet but he dresses some of the biggest stars in the country so I’m quite excited about that.
If Will.i.am asked you to design an outfit for him, you'd dress him in…? Oh snap! That guy dresses so well hey, but I’ve never seen Will.i.am in boat shoes, I’d definitely dress him in that with regards to foot wear, then given him some floral print pants they must have red flowers on them and lastly for the top section I’d keep it black and red, I’d suit him up in a red tie, black shirt and a nice black velvet blazer. The last touch on his head would be a stylish Muslim turban to compliment the whole attire
Your role on Muvhango as “Vusi Mukwevho” would you say that Raphael is quite similar to Vusi? No way we’re two different people, I’ve had to hustle for everything I have in my life hey and “Vusi” is just a spoiled brat who goes to private schools, I went to a hard core Afrikaans school so you can imagine. Plus “Vusi” doesn’t have style man; his sense of style is whack! I have style [laughs] We’re two very different people maybe we have similar snobbish characteristics, I personally don’t know where I get it from but I’ve been told I can be a snob at times.
There are many folks who are trying to break into the industry but aren’t aware that it’s one industry that has its demons, what would you say is the best way to maintain longevity in this industry? Simple, just stay humble. You need to stay humble in this industry and just staying away from the rowdiness that comes with being in the public eye because ultimately this is a sex, drugs and rock n' roll type of business. We get invited to these events where there’s like open bars and you can easily get lost in the whole debacle if you don’t have your guard up or have a strong back bone to step back from such things when things get a bit too heated. I’m not saying don’t go to the event but you have to take responsibility of your actions so I’d say if you want to last a long time, you have to be responsible and have humility.
Now your latest single Goggles; who directed that video? No, my boy Ricky Rick directed the video for Goggles. I knew what I wanted for the video but everything else was Ricky Rick that guy is a genius man. We can’t put Bentley’s on a video man, we don’t own Bentley’s so we just opted for sneakers and a clean cut look with obviously two very beautiful ladies
Where do you get these beautiful ladies in Joburg, it seems like they only come out when there’s a video that needs to be done….? DJ Doo Wop, K is on YFM now she’s a DJ there. Otherwise we just go to Neighborgoods there’s tons of beautiful women there my gosh! [Laughs]
In that video we also see you sporting some fresh pair of sneakers, now it seems like now a days everyone is a sneaker head In your opinion what separates’ a real sneaker head to those that claims to be sneaker heads. A real sneaker head knows the real quality sneakers to purchase, I mean there are so many Jordan sneakers yet many people can’t separate the real from the fake ones. A real sneaker head will also know the history of a sneaker, for example if you’re a sneaker head you’d know that the Jordan I came out in in 1988 and was designed by Tinker Hatfield and Peter Moore and so forth. You’ll also know the technology behind the sneaker not just the simple look of it, like me I’m a Nike Air Max fan, especially the Air Max 90 infra-red sneaker because that was the first Air Max 90 sneaker ever made which was revolutionary in terms of the sneaker game. So most people are just jumping onto the sneaker wagon trend and not really investing their time in actually researching and knowing more about the history of sneakers. I don’t even call myself a sneaker head I’d prefer to dub myself as a sneaker lover yet I know so much about sneakers but real sneaker heads like the likes of OKMalum’Kool Kat have tons of sneakers at their cribs and some of the sneakers they have they don’t even wear, they also have the rarest sneakers that are difficult to get a hold of in the market and that for me is a real sneaker head.
Women’s Day is upon us and apart from your lady which other industry girl would you like to be with if let’s say you were single? (We promise we’re not trying to get you in trouble here) Lalla Hirayama definitely. My goodness Lalla, Lalla, Lalla have you ever seen her skin up close?
Yes we have she has an amazing flawless skin, Chris is a very lucky guy right? Please let’s not get into that, you’re breaking my heart now but yes Chris is one lucky man. [Laughs]