The media producer, publicist and accessories designer who documented post-apartheid South Africa's urban culture and put African textiles on the street, the runway and the global stage died at Milpark Hospital from heart failure on May 12.

On the morning after Maria McCloy died at Milpark Hospital from heart failure on 12 May, a huge circle of friends, journalists, designers, musicians and former television producers collectively lamented the loss of one of Johannesburg's most artistically visionary people. There was nothing stilted, stale or boring about her.

McCloy had spent the best part of three decades working at the intersection of South African urban culture, media, and design. When she co-founded Black Rage Productions in 1995 with two fellow Rhodes University journalism graduates, the intention was to fill a gap that struck them as obvious.

South Africa had just emerged from apartheid, Kwaito was pulsing through the townships, a generation was finding its voice, and almost nothing in the mainstream media was paying attention.

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"We saw that in America there was Vibe, and The Source, and television that reflected their culture with serious writing," she later told The Pug magazine.

"We were like. Wow, that culture is beautifully analysed, but nothing here is 1995.

"Kwaito's happening, we have freedom, there is fashion, poetry, arts, and music, but nowhere can you go to read this".

Black Rage Productions became the record that was missing. Its website, rage.co.za, became required...