class act

AN ARTSY ESCAPE

Caryn McArthy and Barbara Innes

According to FAIRLADY’s Creative Director, Caryn McArthy, her high school art teacher was the sole reason she made it through what would otherwise have been a horrible high school experience. ‘She was the only teacher who didn’t say I was going to land up selling toothpaste at a supermarket,’ she says.

‘We immigrated to Cape Town from Zimbabwe when I was 15,’ Caryn explains. When she started at Sans Souci Girls’ High School, she struggled to adjust.‘That’s an awkward age to make such a big adjustment. As with emigration anywhere, everything feels foreign and peculiar. I think I literally wept every day for three months.’

‘I’ve never been a massively academic person and I think a big problem was that the teachers focused too much on academia and not enough on arts, culture, and music. They weren’t very forward-thinking.’

‘I was never lifted up or made to feel good about myself,’ says Caryn. ‘The only place I ever felt fantastic was in the