The designer behind some of Mzansi’s most talked about red carpet gowns has turned his creative world into six eau de parfums. You will find them at Foschini, Beauty Box and Bash, and that detail is the real story.
For close to two decades, Gert-Johan Coetzee has been the designer South African celebrities call when the night matters. Now he wants to dress you in something you cannot see.
From couture to eau de parfum
Coetzee has launched his debut fragrance collection, six eau de parfums available exclusively through TFG’s beauty retailers: Foschini, Beauty Box and the Bash online platform. It is his first major move beyond couture, and it turns one of the country’s most recognisable fashion names into a beauty brand with national reach.
A designer releasing a perfume is hardly new. What makes this launch worth paying attention to is where the bottles are sitting, who is backing them, and what that suggests about how far a homegrown fashion label can now travel.
Who is Gert-Johan Coetzee?
If you have watched a South African awards show in the past fifteen years, you have almost certainly seen his work, even if you did not know the name behind it.
Coetzee grew up in Koster in the North West and studied at the North West School of Design before launching his own label in 2010. He built his reputation on dramatic, sculpted eveningwear and a client list that reads like a roll call of local entertainment, including Bonang Matheba, Terry Pheto and Lira.
His gowns have also crossed the Atlantic. Kelly Rowland and Kourtney Kardashian have worn his designs, and in 2020 he created a custom gown for Cardi B in a single week, a story that did a great deal to introduce his name to international audiences.
That history matters for a fragrance launch. A perfume lives or dies on the credibility of the name on the bottle, and Coetzee arrives with almost twenty years of it.
Why a fashion designer went to Grasse
Plenty of celebrity and designer fragrances amount to little more than a licensing agreement and a familiar face on the box. Coetzee seems determined not to be filed under that heading, and the collection’s origin story is his strongest argument.
The designer travelled to Grasse, the town in the south of France long regarded as the historic home of perfumery, to learn the craft first hand. He worked alongside master perfumers and explored perfume oils, treating scent the way he treats a garment: something built note by note rather than assembled from a trend report.
“Creating these fragrances was a journey of artistic discovery,” Coetzee says. “In Grasse, I fell in love with the craft of fine perfumery. It wasn’t about following trends, but rather taking the time to refine every note until it perfectly captured a specific emotion and story I wanted to tell.”
It is the same thinking that shapes his fashion. A Coetzee gown is designed to make the wearer feel a particular way. The fragrances are meant to do the same, through mood and memory rather than silhouette.
The six Gert-Johan Coetzee fragrances
Rather than one signature scent stretched across six bottles, the collection works more like a wardrobe, with each fragrance pitched at a different personality.
Gimme Gimme is the playful one. It opens on sugared notes and tagete before settling into amber, florals, clove, moss and musk. It is the sweetest and most youthful of the six, designed to read as warm rather than cloying.
Eau de Trouble is the flirt. It moves from orange, anise and almond into rose, jasmine and orange blossom, then finishes on caramel, vanilla, tonka bean and musk.
Rumours & Roses is the romantic. Raspberry, blackberry, tangerine and baie rose sit over rose, chamomile and a smoked accord, resting on a deeper base of patchouli, agarwood, cedarwood and musk.
Top Secret is the power player and the most commanding of the collection. It is built on Turkish and Damask rose with saffron and black pepper, deepened by amber and oud wood.
Shhhh… is the soft touch. Pink berries, cotton candy, bergamot and elemi lead into jasmine, honey and tonka bean, drying down to ambery woods, cedarwood, labdanum, patchouli and vanilla.
Uncontainable closes the collection for the individualist. It opens unusually with cardamom, carrot, and fig, followed by sandalwood, iris, cedarwood, and cashmere wood, with musk, amber, papyrus, and leather adding depth.
How much does the Gert-Johan Coetzee perfume cost, and where can you buy it?
The collection is available now, online at Bash and in selected Foschini and Beauty Box stores nationwide. TFG is the exclusive stockist.
Each fragrance comes in two sizes. The 50ml is priced at R1,895 and the 100ml at R2,565. That places the range squarely in designer fragrance territory, on the same shelf as the imported houses that usually own that space. Judging by the positioning, that is entirely the point.
Why the TFG partnership is the bigger story
Globally, fragrance is where fashion houses make a large share of their money and most of their new customers. A couture gown reaches one client. A perfume reaches anyone willing to spend on a bottle. It is the route that turned European fashion names into household brands, and Coetzee is following it from Johannesburg rather than Paris.
He could not do that alone. A designer label can make a beautiful scent, but getting it into stores across the country, at scale, takes a retail partner with national infrastructure. That is what TFG brings.
“Collaborating with Gert-Johan Coetzee to exclusively launch his fragrance collection is a fantastic milestone for TFG Beauty,” says Candice Fogarty, TFG’s Head of Beauty. “It reflects our ambition to bring customers distinctive brands, meaningful experiences and the very best in beauty.”
Coetzee describes the arrangement in similar terms. “Partnering with TFG as our exclusive stockist is an extraordinary milestone,” he says. “They share my passion for beauty, design and fashion, and I am excited for people across South Africa to experience these scents firsthand.”
What this means for South African shoppers and the local industry
For consumers, the practical change is simple. A locally created designer fragrance is now sitting in stores many South Africans already shop at, rather than behind a department store counter reserved for international names. You can walk into a Foschini in Polokwane or Port Elizabeth and smell it for yourself.
For the industry, it is something closer to proof of concept. South African fashion has spent the past decade showing it can compete creatively with anyone. The harder question has always been commercial: can a local designer name grow into a full lifestyle brand the way global houses have, or does it stay confined to the runway and the red carpet?
Coetzee’s move into beauty is one of the clearest attempts yet to answer that question on home soil, with a South African retail giant behind it. If it works, other local designers will be watching closely.
A scent of what comes next
It would be overstating things to say six bottles will transform an industry. They will not.
But the Gert-Johan Coetzee fragrance collection takes the storytelling and craft obsession that built his fashion reputation and puts it into a product that almost anyone can wear, whether or not they will ever own one of his gowns. That is how fashion brands become household names.
It also suggests something about ambition. For a long time, the story of a South African designer ended at the hem of a dress. Coetzee is betting it does not have to.
