The humble South African shoe that Hollywood A-listers, British royals love

After a funky makeover, the national shoe is being worn by the likes of Matthew McConaughey and Prince Harry.

In August 2016, Nick Dreyer packed up his failing art dealership in Johannesburg and decided to head back to his native Cape Town. To pass the time on the long drive home, he called his old school buddy Ross Zondagh, who just happened to be going through business struggles of his own. Over the course of the next five hours, the friends chatted about everything from the Springboks’ dismal performances on the rugby field that year (how times have changed), to the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics, which had taken place a couple of weeks earlier.

“We were both really disappointed by the outfits our athletes were wearing,” Zondagh tells Al Jazeera on a visit to a repurposed fish factory near Cape Town’s port precinct. “The Nigerians felt Nigerian, the Americans felt American, … but the South Africans could have been from anywhere.”

“We started talking about how we could improve the uniform,” Dreyer says in the duo’s shared office in the vibey headquarters of Veldskoen, the shoe manufacturer that emerged from that conversation between Dreyer and Zondagh. The office features plush armchairs, an orange mountain bike and a pile of timber in the corner.

It’s clear that the founders, who are both 47 (“but we feel 67!” Zondagh says) genuinely get along. Zondagh, who wears flip-flops and sports a scraggly beard, does most of the chatting while Dreyer – tall with neatly ironed jeans – chimes in occasionally to add more detail: “Our country’s just this fantastic melting pot of people and cultures and languages, … but our Olympians were wearing boring old tracksuits.”

After discussing how they could improve the athletes’ headwear (a Zulu umqhele, perhaps?) and clothing (you can’t go wrong with a Madiba shirt), they got onto footwear. “The obvious choice was veldskoen,” Zondagh says of a basic leather “field” or walking shoe often worn by men in rural areas. “But it wasn’t remotely cool.”