Imagemakers has been fortunate enough to see it all. For 44 years (that's how long we've been manufacturing and supplying professional wear - just after television began appearing in SA's living rooms!), we've watched the city around us change almost beyond recognition. Of everything we've seen - from café arcades to the rise and fall of video rental stores to AI running our lives - no transformation has been more remarkable than what has happened to Cape Town's hospitality industry over the past 34 years.
If you had stood at Cape Town's harbour in 1992 and tried to imagine what it would look like 34 years later, not even Steven Spielberg or George Lucas could have dreamed it up. It's nothing short of awe-inspiring and astonishing - let's take a little stroll down memory lane for a moment.
That year, Victoria Wharf began trading at the fledgling V&A Waterfront. The wider Waterfront redevelopment had begun only a few years earlier - do you remember the first pub/bar 'Ferryman's'? That was there long before a single retail shop opened.
The intention was to connect Cape Town to it's ocean and breathe new economic life into it's working harbour. Between 1991 and 1995, hotels, restaurants, offices, shops and attractions began filling the spaces around it. There's a great story here - V&A Waterfront - Our Development
Today, around 26 million people a year move through the V&A Waterfront neighbourhood - it's safe to say that it's become one of the most recognisable tourism and hospitality destinations on the African continent. To put that into perspective - that's like the entire (the ENTIRE!) population of Australia visiting Cape Town every year. And that's not to see their rugby team being humbled either.
And the accolades started piling up
Best City in the World - #1 (2025) - Time Out
Best City on Earth - #1 (2025) - Telegraph Travel Awards
Africa's Leading City Destination - five consecutive years (2021-2025) - World Travel Awards
Best City in Africa & Middle East - #1 (2025) - Travel + Leisure World's Best Awards
Africa's Best Culinary City Destination - three consecutive years (2023-2025) - World Culinary Awards
Best City in the World for Food - #1 (2024) - Condé Nast Traveller Readers Choice Awards
Best City in the World / Greatest City on Earth - #1 (2023) - Telegraph Travel Awards
Most Desirable City in the World - #1 (2023) - Wanderlust Reader Travel Awards
Africa's Best City Brand - #1 (2023) - Brand Finance City Index
Best-value Long-haul Winter Sun Destination (2023) - Post Office Travel Money
Most Promising Muslim-Friendly City of the Year - Non-OIC (2022) - Halal Travel Awards
Thirty-four years ago, very few (if any) international visitors would have flown halfway around the world specifically for a Cape Town restaurant reservation.
Today, food isn't simply something visitors enjoy when they get here. It has become one of the reasons to come.
And Imagemakers has seen that transformation first-hand. We were here long before Cape Town became the world-class destination it is today, and over the years we've supplied many of the businesses that helped build that reputation with the Team Uniforms their people wear to represent their individual brands.
Perhaps the most interesting part of our story is that Cape Town did not achieve that by becoming more like London, Paris or New York.
It succeeded by becoming more unmistakably Cape Town.
1992: the world was only beginning to discover what was here
Statistics South Africa recorded approximately 2.89 million foreign traveller arrivals into the entire country in 1992. Historical tourism datasets aren't directly comparable with today's visitor measures, but the figure gives a realistic sense of scale - it's roughly 270% higher now.
A UN Tourism case study subsequently found Cape Town tourism numbers growing by approximately 8% to 10% a year during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Let's think about all this for a while. The mountain hadn't changed. The coastline hadn't changed. The vineyards had been there for centuries.
What changed was the infrastructure, accessibility and, crucially, the experience being built around them.
Cape Town was learning how to turn extraordinary natural assets into an extraordinary visitor experience.
Design mattered. Service mattered. Food mattered. The welcome mattered.
And increasingly, the people delivering all of it mattered.
By 2015, a UN Tourism study counted almost 4,000 tourism enterprises in Cape Town.
Cape Town had built an ecosystem.
Imagemakers was changing with the city
Our story runs quietly alongside this one.
When Victoria Wharf opened in 1992, Imagemakers had already been operating in Cape Town for a decade.
The Corporate Clothing of the early 1990s belonged to an era of stronger tailoring, structured silhouettes and considerably more formal workplace dressing. On our 'About Us' page, we describe having dressed South African businesses since the era of "shoulder pads and pastel suits."
The transformation is particularly obvious in women's clothing. Search for Ladies Workwear SA today and you'll find a world far removed from the rigid office dressing of previous decades. Modern Women’s Uniforms need to accommodate different roles, body shapes, working environments and preferences while still allowing the brand and team to look cohesive and recognisable.
2010 put Cape Town in millions of living rooms
Before Cape Town could become one of the world's great hospitality destinations, the world had to see it.
The FIFA World Cup provided an enormous international showcase. UN Tourism found Cape Town welcomed 14% more international tourists in 2010 than in 2009 - more than 173,000 additional visitors in a single year.
Millions who had never travelled to Cape Town suddenly saw our magnificent city on television.
Table Mountain. The Atlantic coastline. The Waterfront. The restaurants. The people. And errr the vuvuzelas (but let's not focus on them).
But exposure can only get a destination so far.
The more significant achievement came afterwards. Cape Town kept giving people reasons to return.
Thirty years ago, few international travellers would have planned a long-haul journey around securing a Cape Town restaurant reservation. Today, they unbelievably do.
In 2025, three Cape Town restaurants appeared in The World's 50 Best Restaurants Top 100: La Colombe, FYN and Salsify at the Roundhouse.
Luxury changed too - and so did the uniforms
There was a time when luxury almost automatically meant stiff and formal: grand entrances, rigid service conventions, uptight restaurants and employees dressed according to fairly narrow ideas of what a five-star establishment should look like.
Some of that still remains. But today's traveller can spend thousands of rand a night and still expect the experience to feel relaxed, local and human.
You can even see that change in what hospitality teams wear.
The best uniforms no longer necessarily look like "uniforms" in the traditional sense. Modern Professional Wear allows hospitality businesses to create a coordinated wardrobe rather than requiring every employee to wear precisely the same outfit.
It might seem like a small detail, but hospitality is an industry built on small details.
There's a reason luxury hotels spend fortunes on lighting, furniture, flowers, fragrance and tableware. Guests notice things before anyone says a word.
And that includes people.
A Cape Town hotel front-desk employee interviewed previously by Imagemakers put it rather neatly:
"You're tired, you're smiling, and you still have to look professional." Taken from our The Imagemakers Working In South Africa Series Part 1
A hotel isn't experienced principally through its building. It's experienced through people.
The receptionist greeting a weary guest after an 11-hour flight. The waiter who remembers a table's preferences. The concierge who solves a problem. The housekeeping team passing a guest in the corridor.
Their language, attitude, knowledge, confidence - and, yes, their appearance - collectively become the brand.
For Imagemakers, that evolution has meant moving beyond identical uniforms towards coordinated Team Uniforms and wardrobes that create a common identity while recognising the people wearing them.
From shoulder pads to the modern Cape Town workplace
The workplace of 2026 expects more from Corporate Wear than the workplace of 1992 did.
Clothing still has to identify a team and represent a brand, but now it must work across different ages, body shapes and job roles.
In hospitality, those demands become even more pronounced. Teams move between air-conditioned interiors, restaurant terraces and the Cape Town summer heat, often spending an entire shift on their feet.
Modern team clothing therefore isn't simply about fashion decisions. It's about operational decisions.
Today, Imagemakers offers mix-and-match work wear in coordinated colour palettes, allowing businesses to create a recognisable team identity while giving individual employees greater choice.
The clothes changed because work changed.
And Cape Town was changing around them.
But perhaps the mountain was never the secret
Cape Town has always had advantages other cities would envy.
Table Mountain was there in 1992. So were the oceans, beaches and vineyards.
What changed was Cape Town's ability to turn place into experience.
There is no hotel occupancy statistic for a great welcome. No tourism report records the receptionist who rescues a honeymoon, the waiter who turns dinner into the highlight of a holiday or the concierge recommendation guests tell their friends about when they return home.
Yet those interactions are the very definition of hospitality.
And they're also the very definition of a 'Capetonian'.
34 years later, what comes next?
In 1992, Victoria Wharf opened its doors as part of a new vision for Cape Town's harbour.
Imagemakers, then ten years old, was already dressing South African businesses, including those on hospitality's front line.
Thirty-four years later, that harbour is surrounded by some of Africa's most recognisable hotels, restaurants, galleries and attractions.
And Imagemakers is still here in Cape Town, still family run and still producing the clothing worn by the people representing South African businesses.
The styles have changed enormously. So has the city.
World-class destinations aren't built in a year.
They're built experience by experience, business by business and person by person.
Imagemakers has seen it all.
And after 34 extraordinary years of transformation, the most exciting question might not be how Cape Town got here.
