30 years of Hemporium: A Cape Town original leading the way

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The company making hemp desirable, from fashion to cosmetics

**Last updated: **Monday, 17 August 2026

Thirty years ago, hemp in South Africa was closer to contraband than fashion. Today, walk into Hemporium in the East City district, and you'll find it in designer hats that have appeared on a Dior runway, buttery-soft clothing, skincare, homeware and architectural materials, all on the ground floor of a 12-storey building made with hempcrete.Timber, plants, and natural light run throughout the store, closer to a bespoke showroom than a typical storefront. Image: Kara le Roux

Hemporium has spent three decades making the case that hemp isn't the rough, beige sack people imagine. It's strong, breathable, long-lasting and remarkably versatile.

More importantly, this Cape Town original also helped fight for the plant to be legally grown in South Africa, developed thousands of ways to use it and created a platform for other local designers to experiment with it too.Hemporium's flagship store on 84 Harrington forms part of the bustling East City district. Image: Kara le Roux

The best way to understand hemp is to touch it. At Hemporium’s Harrington Street flagship store – set up as a guided exhibit around what hemp can do – you’re surrounded by the material.

Hemp plaster, board and insulation are built into the store’s walls, all of which you can touch, and the store itself happens to sit inside the world's tallest building constructed using hempcrete. Hemp surrounds you when walking into the store, from the products on the shelves to the walls. Image: Kara le Roux

Inside, the material becomes progressively harder to recognise. You’ll pass hand-crocheted hemp baskets from Moonbasket, Patterned Hemporium cloths and homeware like table runners, pillows and more.

Further in, sinks are built into the cosmetics counter so you can lather soap, rub in moisturiser, and smell the shampoo, which is handmade in small batches in Scarborough. It’s good for sensitive scalps because it contains no lauryl sulfate, the petroleum byproduct that gives commercial shampoo its foam.

Then, in the rails of designer clothing, are Sitting Pretty’s boho-chic womenswear and Earth Age’s funky bucket hats, alongside Hemporium's own bags and accessories.Cosmetics like scrubs, washes, and creams can be tested and washed off in the in-store sinks. Image: Kara le Roux

People keep coming back for the socks. Hemporium’s been stocking them for 30 years, and they are a favourite among hikers because they are antibacterial and sweat-resistant. You see, hemp fibre is hollow, which makes it a better heat regulator than cotton and roughly 10 times stronger.

A hemp t-shirt (which feels closer to linen than cotton against the skin) softens with every wash instead of thinning out, so a single shirt can last you decades.

Each product at Hemporium reveals another property of a plant most of us still know surprisingly little about.Displays from local designers that work with hemp, like Earth Age, sit alongside Hemporium’s own bags and accessories. Image: Kara le Roux.

Since 1996, Hemporium has developed more than 2 000 products to prove hemp’s range; they also realised that they did not need to make everything themselves.

So they give more of their shelves to South African designers experimenting with the material.

Sitting Pretty has been part of that ecosystem for over a decade. Earth Age is a newer addition; its hats recently walked a showcase for Dior at Paris Fashion Week.

Add local knitwear by Yarhn Menswear, hemp footwear by Reefer, and skincare by The Apothecary, and it’s easy to see how Hemporium has created an environment that sustainable fashion in Cape Town can depend on.Hemporium is a platform where other designers working with hemp get to showcase and sell their products. Image: Kara le Roux

None of this success was ever guaranteed. For most of Hemporium’s history, South African law made no distinction between hemp and marijuana, meaning the plant behind every t-shirt in the shop was, technically, illegal to grow.

Hemporium spent years pushing for change, running cultivation trials in the Eastern and Western Cape and lobbying through court cases and committee hearings, until the Plant Improvement Act finally reclassified hemp as a legal agricultural crop in 2021.

Even now, there’s no local processing to turn hemp into textile-grade fabric, so Hemporium imports the cloth from overseas mills, making it the country’s largest supplier of organic hemp fabric.

Roughly 60% of what Hemporium brings in goes to other local designers and manufacturers, including bespoke homeware products for wine farms like Lanzerac, Van Loveren and La Motte.

It also supplies hemp twine to the H18 foundation, a non-profit training unemployed women in craft skills. They hand-crochet the twine into totes and reusable face rounds from home.Thirty years of hemp products customers won’t let go of. Image: Kara le Roux

Hemporium’s Harrington Street address feels like an appropriate home. Nursery Plantify and plastic-free grocer Nude Foods sit nearby, among many of the city’s other experimental businesses.

Thirty years on, Hemporium’s case for hemp isn’t made in a courtroom anymore.

It’s made every time someone tries on a t-shirt, tests a shampoo, or looks up at the hemp building that houses the store.

The proof is everywhere.Hemporium's storefront on Harrington Street, located on the ground floor of the world’s tallest hempcrete building. Image: Kara le Roux

Hemporium is open: Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Saturdays 9am to 2pmFind it: Ground floor, 84 Harrington Street, Cape Town Contact on: 021 702 4988 **More info: **On the Hemporium website

Stock up on package-free pantry staples at Nude Foods.

Catch live jazz, funk, and more in Harrington Street on Thursdays.

Bar hop your way through Harrington Street.

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