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Hanneli Rupert grew up with a front-row view of global luxury. Her father, Johann Rupert, oversees Richemont, the group behind Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. But her own path has been quieter and more stubbornly local: build a luxury business in Africa, source and manufacture at home, and prove that “Made in South Africa” can mean best-in-class.
Rupert, 40, founded Okapi in 2008, an accessories and lifestyle label that makes handbags, small leather goods and jewelry entirely in the Western Cape. The brand’s supply chain is unusually tight for luxury: traceable materials, long-standing relationships with ostrich-farming families and fourth-generation leather artisans, and production kept close to where the raw materials originate. The point is both quality and jobs.
From art school to a homegrown luxury play
Before fashion, there was painting. Rupert studied fine art at London’s Wimbledon College of Art and graduated in 2007. She returned to Cape Town determined to turn design into locally anchored work. That decision birthed two ventures: Okapi and Merchants on Long, a concept store championing ethical African design that opened in 2010 and became a clubhouse for a new wave of makers.
Her early interviews laid down the thesis: if luxury is about excellence and scarcity, Africa’s deep bench of craft should qualify—provided the production is clean and the storytelling honest. Okapi’s model is “farm-to-table fashion,” using by-products from South Africa’s free-range livestock industry (notably ostrich and blesbok) and insisting on full transparency from pasture to atelier.
A brand built on materials, traceability and myth
Okapi’s name nods to the elusive Congolese animal—the “African unicorn”—and the label leans into a subtly mystical aesthetic: talismanic charms, horn pendants, and a palette inspired by Karoo dusk and fynbos greens rather than Paris runways. That aesthetic is backed by detail-obsessed sourcing: leather and trims are procured and tanned locally; pieces are cut and finished in Cape Town; waste is minimized. In a market where “African-inspired” is often made elsewhere, Okapi’s insistence on African production is the differentiator.
The approach has brought broader recognition. Rupert has spoken on sustainability and African craft at global forums, and she now serves as vice-chair of the Michelangelo Foundation, the Swiss nonprofit behind the Homo Faber fair celebrating excellence in craftsmanship—another signal that her orbit extends beyond retail into culture and advocacy.
The family name helps; the independence matters more
It’s impossible to tell Rupert’s story without the surname. Johann Rupert regularly tops rich lists and controls a global luxury portfolio. But Hanneli’s route is pointedly bottom-up: she built Merchants on Long to give African designers shelf space and created Okapi to prove a South African supply chain can meet luxury standards without compromise. That local-first stance has been consistent for more than a decade.
She is also part of a cohort reframing the exotics conversation. Okapi emphasizes traceable, responsibly sourced by-products rather than trophy materials, a stance Rupert has defended publicly as both pragmatic and ethical: if animal products already exist within regulated farming, the task is to use them fully rather than let waste pile up. It’s a cool-headed argument aimed at a hot-button topic.
Rupert’s résumé gives the strategy ballast. She has been profiled by international fashion and business media, included in global fashion councils, and courted by luxury retailers for pop-ups and capsule collections. But the center of gravity remains Cape Town, where Okapi’s team of artisans turn out collections that feel more heirloom than hype cycle.
There’s also the matter of time. A decade-plus into Okapi, Rupert is in that rare position where her last name opens doors but the work has its own signature. The brand’s Cape-to-client model—sourcing in the Western Cape, making in the Western Cape, exporting finished goods—reads like a playbook for dignified, scalable African luxury. It has taken patience, and it shows.
If the next chapter of luxury is about where things come from and who benefits, Rupert’s path offers a tidy answer: stay close to the source, keep the craft visible, and let the product speak. The family legacy is undeniable. The one she’s writing is, increasingly, hers alone.
