Lagos Space Programme: For the Culture and the Future

Posted on January 28, 2021 by mazzi

“I have always known that once you create good work and once it is authentic good work people will always come.” Says Adeju Thompson, creative director and founder of Lagos Space Programme. The brand’s debut at this year’s Milan Men’s Fashion Week was topped and tailed with a flurry of excited and laudatory press notices and more pertinently, in these economic uncertain times, global commercial interest. For Thompson who identifies as non-binary, the attention and plaudits have been novel, “I see [myself] as someone who exists on the fringe, as someone who sees themselves as part of the other,”. But although identifying as queer means many fora of existence in a CIS gendered centric world are somewhat liminal, what Thompson has unequivocally proved is that when the work is undeniable, the clothes covetable and the presentation and interpretation of ancient and current truths arresting, admiration is inevitable

From the Collection Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet The Dress Before We Greet The Wearer, Image: Kadara Enyeasi

Creating Spaces for Different Voices

For Thompson, what started as a deeply personal aim to depict an alternative Lagos that was not steeped in the maximalist glamour and ostentation that the city has long been associated with, has evolved into a carefully curated challenging of norms and myths that have calcified into facts. They expand “It was very important that I contributed my voice..it was also important for me to create clothing from a very informed very in=depth well-researched perspective..[and] I know it is kind of weird but I felt a bit frustrated because I am someone who doesn’t like to be spoken for.” Indeed, since they founded Lagos Space Programme in 2018, the brand which takes as its raison d’être and Instagram bio the phrase ‘Sartorial Project exploring African futures’ has dared to interrogate, explore and propose alternative ways of being via the lens of apparel. Thompson not only challenges but upends many assumptions of the lived experiences of Africans and what luxury is and should be in the future. The clothes though in Milan they were shown in Men’s week are specifically non-binary and customers past and present have come from all genders Furthermore, they have dived into topics that for many of a more cautious disposition are off limits: traditional belief systems, gender norms, mental health and colonialism as a cultural decimating force have all been put under their forensic eye.

Frpm the Collection Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet The Dress Before We Greet The Wearer, Image: Kadara Enyeasi — *From the Collection Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet Dress Before We Greet its Wearer, Image: Kadara Enyeasi*

Identity, how much significance we attach to it and what it is informed by is a theme that Thompson returns to frequently: “It has become important for me to have a cultural aspect in my collections…for me, my Yoruba identity is always going to be a huge part of my work.” For Thompson, dabbling is not an option. When they choose to expand upon a thesis, they do so fulsomely. Their break-out collection in Lagos dissected what a modern-day Babalawo, or Traditional Priest would need from his clothing and resulted in an exposition for Afro-Minimalism. The collection consisted of long line sleeveless coats with multiple pockets, Adire, a traditional fabric, which Thompson has returned to severally, fashioned into wrapper skirts, and shirts and jackets occasionally adorned thin strips of reflective fabric, a hint of the futuristic possibilities that a modern diviner might be able to see. An installation at Lagos’ interdisciplinary art space, 16/16 followed, complete with a divination booth that those open and curious enough could engage with. As Thompson dared to place what has since colonialism become a marginalised practise, due to the dominant religions of Christianity and Islam viewing Babalawos as fetish and demonic, there was an inevitable backlash from those who saw the show and collection as dangerous. They reflect: “In Nigeria people are very weird [about my work] and very scared about my work. And it really breaks my heart because I am Nigerian. If only people would take time to understand where my research is coming from.” For Thompson’s part their research into ancient Ifá Priesthood divination practices showed they had more in common with computer coding and applied mathematics than barbarism. It is this reclaiming of Nigerian cultural history and placing it under a celebratory light rather than a derogatory one that drives much of their work.

*Yegwa Ukpo Wears Project 3 Awo Workwear, Image: Courtesy of Lagos Space Programme*

This is not to say that Thompson is one for culture that is mummified. Their research always circles back to the contemporary, distilling knowledge from the past and using it as a tool to answer the challenging questions of here and now. This approach is most clearly seen in their ongoing work with Adire, a traditional Yoruba fabric, which in their hands they have defined as Post-Adire. “I find Adire itself stunningly poetic, this idea that you can tell a story on your body, like a woman will wear a print because she recently got married. This idea of subcultures passing on hidden codes within the pieces themselves, and it is only if you are part of this community that you understand…I find that idea on a surface level was very fascinating.” Thompson has experimented with different indigo dyeing techniques, a textile they also discovered had anti-inflammatory and immune system enhancing properties. Often working side by side with traditional artisans, they are reticent to use language and terms that have been popularised in the modernising textile and craft space. “I am trusting them [the artisans] to guide me… I don’t like using the word elevate. I think it is very presumptuous to say I am elevating a thousand year process. I think for me I see myself as a conduit to continue the conversation around these things..” Thus Adire prints that are still in production now, but that Thompson discovered were first created in the 16th Century, and speak to specific challenges and triumphs of then, are re-invigorated via print designs that reflect present concerns and joys.They note: “I am trying to create prints that are informed by my realities now, so dissecting ideas about queerness or mental health.” Thompson has taken the process one step further, creating knitwear from Adire, a process hitherto never done. The response has been resoundingly positive: “I am getting so much amazing feedback [and] I have hardly scratched the surface.”

From the Collection Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet The Dress Before We Greet The Wearer, Image: Kadara Enyeasi — *From the Collection Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet Dress Before We Greet its Wearer, Image: Kadara Enyeasi*

Collaboration As A Culture

We live in the age of the omnipresent collabo, where leveraging and partnering to make a bigger splash, particularly in the luxury spaces has become de rigeur. For Thompson, collaboration has always been an intrinsic part of how they work: “I enjoy my collaborations so much because I only collaborate with people like me, people who exist and create on the fringe. My fellow nerds. It is fun because there is no ego, it is just people coming together to create.” For the recently presented collection which has the dual name of Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet The Dress Before We Greet The Wearer, the crew was a veritable who’s who of creatives across disciplines. From artist and photographer Kadara Enyeasi who shot the fashion film and look-book to interdisciplinary designer and architect Kelechi Odu who styled the collection for Arise Fashion Week’s 30/30 Show, to Seetal Solanki who played the role of muse and model for the digital diary of the trip to Osogbo Sacred Grove. Yegwa Ukpo, the pioneer menswear retailer and and unofficial mentor to Thompson was also on hand throughout the process. In each instance Thompson notes how they shared an aesthetics and intellectual shorthand with the respective individuals and drew upon their reservoir of combined talent to add further texture and nuance to the collection. Of Solanki the founder of Ma-tt-er, a platform encouraging different engagement with materials, as well as a Lecturer at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martin’s they note: “One thing that made the shoot with Seetal pretty incredible was the context in which I shot her in. As this woman existing in this very matriarchal space because the grove is dedicated to Osun, the goddess of fertility. So she is interacting in the grove, whether in the water or in the middle of this herd of cows, it was so freakin’ incredible and we didn’t even plan these things … But I think that is also what happens when you are working with your friends.” In the instance of their collaboration with Odu, Thompson alludes to synergies and innately understood references: “We had a pre-meeting but he just got it immediately. I was very inspired by the Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto and Ann Demuelemeester shows. I wanted to give a very vulnerable experience. Because even with the models it wasn’t sexy it was very beautiful. There was a very dark element, but it wasn’t dark in a destructive way it was dark in a very sensitive way. Reflective of someone who thinks deeper about things. Those were the intersections; my identity as a Yoruba person, my queerness, and the fact that I am black.” The result was a haunting show that lingered in the memory longer than the few minutes the models were on the runway, and was one of the evening’s stand-out moments. In the instance of Enyeasi who they collaborated on both the look-book and the fashion film shown in Milan, Thompson succinctly says: “he is one of the few people I can work with and I just can leave him and go do something else because I know that whatever decisions he makes are decisions that I would like.”

Co-creation extended to the clothing and accessories, something that has been an organic part of how Lagos Space Programme operates. The ongoing knitwear project with Alexandra Weigand’s Studio Sattelit continues to widen its locus of expression and added to the Post-Adire canon are tapestries created with Flatspot_, an artist studio based in Oakland, California and masks with London based artist David Gardner who Thompson adds “is a friend who created the masks within the realities of our shared queerness.” One of the most talked about elements of the current collection has been the jewellery and objects,cq collaboration with Dunja Herzog of Red Gold and Phillip Omodamwen a seventh generation master bronze caster based in Benin City, Southern Nigeria – a place that is seen as the spiritual home of bronze-casting in Western Africa. For Thompson and Herzog, their working engagement came about through a variety of synchronic conversations and meetings. Herzog is Swiss but came to live in Nigeria, where she rented an Afro-Modernist house designed by the iconic architect Alan Vaughan-WIlliams that acted as a salon and meeting point for creatives in Lagos, as well as a location for a Lagos Space Programme shoot. Thompson relates: “I was talking to Dunja about how my new collection was informed by clothing as spiritual objects and how I am very fascinated by the idea of designing bells for the collection, and she says ‘hold on, say no more,’ and she is rushing upstairs and bringing these series of bells she had developed herself. And it was like what? It was these two nerds nerding out in Ikoyi about bells and sound and soundscapes and the possibilities of our potential” they add laughing. Apart from the bells, staffs that could double up as wands, bangles and harness jewellery that had a modern talismanic quality to them, all designed in concert together, was the crafting process itself. It involved a road-trip to Omodamwen’s studio, where the master caster still employs the lost-wax method of casting, one which is also practised by the goldsmiths working for the Asantehene of the Ashanti in Ghana. Thompson and Herzog describe the completed collection as ‘sculptural accessories’ and the soundscapes they make in their movement is of equal import to how they adorn the bodies of the wearers. In a sense the aural effect is akin to an Emeka Ogboh, piece, only in this instance one is transported to a world of Ifá Priests and Priestesses, divination and Yoruba deities. It also reflects the collection’s title, with one ‘hearing’ the ensembles as much as ‘seeing’ them prior to greeting them. For Thompson, collaboration was also an artistic form of defiance adding: “I like that I have created my work outside of the system in Lagos and its gatekeepers. A lot of people don’t know me, don’t care about me and I literally don’t care [because] I have created my own community.” But more than that, Thompson and their ever-evolving and expanding roster of co-creators are illustrative of what collaboration should really be – a cross-fertilisation of ideas and methodologies, a playground for new ways of thinking and being and a crucible for realising beauty in it’s most undiluted sense.

Redefining Success and Luxury

Challenging what success is and educating consumers in luxury’s possibilities is one of Lagos Space Programme’s modus operandi. Prior to the Milan show, the brand was already on the international fashion community’s radar, courtesy of a full feature in Vogue in 2019; “I got that article when I was less than 800 followers (on Instagram) and it wasn’t by any connections just the strength of my work” Thompson reminisces. But although the praise party has expanded exponentially in the months since, reaching fever pitch in the last few weeks, they are adamant that they don’t want to get caught up in being the next big thing from the continent or part of “Africa Rising” narratives. For Thompson, Africa, and their locale of Nigeria, and South-Western Nigeria in particular, has always been a nexus of innovation, excellence and spiritual dynamism and these things are not contingent on praise or acknowledgement from a Western gaze.

Value always starts with self-acknowledgement and love, and it is something that Thompson chooses to imbue their work with. For them. inspirations always emanate from what has been previously overlooked, forgotten or hidden but that is too important to remain so and they are consistently drawn to those existing on the margins. The prior collection Gay Guerrilla was inspired by the composer Julius Eastman, who died after a lengthy battle with drug addiction and mental health challenges: Thompson notes: “when I studied the life of Julius Eastman I was very struck by the similarities of our lives and a lot of my friends were cautious about how much I consumed, because there was a lot of darkness. But I told people that darkness is also part of the human condition and when I am creating a collection it is a form of therapy for me first and foremost.” With Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet The Dress Before We Greet The Wearer, Thompson was making a comment on dress as spiritual armour complete with supernatural properties. Their explorations were further augmented in an essay by the late scholar Ulli Beier, that explored similar themes, and who alongside his first wife Suzanne Wenger spent time in Nigeria in the 1960s and was part of the Sacred Art Movement in Osogbo. For Thompson the clothes and accessories are meant to have a dual role: one as luxury adornment and second as meditative aid, they add: “When you dissect my work further it is me weaving these different narratives in a way that is very seamless.” Thus Thompson’s work which straddles the medicinal, spiritual and apparel becomes desirable on numerous levels.

Thompson is keen to communicate to consumers that production takes time, is done in a human-scale with quality rather than profit in its purest sense being the driving factor and that runs of pieces will inevitably be small. In the purest capitalist sense it is a foolhardy model but it chimes perfectly in this more compassionate age we are living in, and also is a clever response to the challenge facing the luxury industry globally. If anyone who has the money can purchase an item and shareholders are demanding the maximum number are sold, how do you retain exclusivity? How do you honestly respond to the accusation of adding to the collective environmental Armageddon we are all facing? For Thompson and Lagos Space Programme, their response is to follow a conscious capitalist model; one that also places equal value on the knowledge and cultural systems that the pieces explore, the means in which they are made, and the resultant quantity produced as much as how they look on the body and how hard the tills ring in their making. Sustainability as a lifestyle is further reflected in the ordering method: the current collection is available to order until the 31st January 2021 with items sent to clients in mid May 2021. This is not fashion for those accustomed to ‘drops’ and who need to post their #ootd post-haste. Thompson adds; “The people who connect with my work, who buy the stuff, tend to be older so they are not people who go around on Social Media taking selfies, they just like wearing the clothes and getting on with their lives.” It is however, a niche without borders as clients are dotted across Africa and the globe with a particularly strong presence in the creative industries and in Europe, America and Asia.

From the Collection Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet The Dress Before We Greet The Wearer, Image: Isabel Okoro — *From the Collection Aṣọ Lànkí, Kí Ató Ki Èntìyàn / We Greet Dress Before We Greet its Wearer, Image: Isabel Okoro*

Whilst clothes are the starting point for Thompson they are ultimately a medium for deeper discourses something that they indicate when we conclude our conversation talking of future plans: “I envision Lagos Space Programme to be much more than a fashion brand I want it to be a research based establishment where we are contributing and adding to the conversations around African design.” `Not only have the clothes have acted as a catalyst for conversations around gender, queerness and conservative norms in Nigeria and Africa as a whole, they have also provided an important link between culture past and the current experiments that will inform culture future. That Thompson returns to motifs and methods that have centuries old provenance such as indigo dyeing, textile weaving, brass casting and divination but explores them via the lens of contemporary mores, fears and wants creates for thrilling results. That they do so in a contained palette of soothing blues is evidence of a maestro of mood evocation. In these tumultuous times we could all benefit from feeling calmer and having greater insight of where we have come from and how we wish to proceed in light of that. The brand and its founder may be young but Lagos Space Progamme’s agenda is rooted in eternal truths that Thompson aims to reveal one collection at a time to a global audience: “We are incredibly complex and we have been lied to and I think that as a designer it is my job to highlight my culture. We need to continue the conversation around these things. I feel like our ancestors would have expected us to continue the dialogues around what they started.” The oracle has spoken and the fashion world continues to listen, wear, and love it all.

Sukeina: Sartorial Story Tellers

Posted on January 15, 2021 by mazzi

Finding time over Zoom to speak to Omar Salam, the founder and creative director of Sukeina, is a tricky process, but for the best reasons. In spite of the world being in the grip of a global pandemic, things have never been busier, Since launching Sukeina in 2012, his has been a giddy, upward trajectory. Critical acclaim and impressive press notices, including a multi-page editorial in the prestigious US Vogue September 2020 issue, iconic supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Natalia Vodianova as early adopters of his signature pieces and stockists globally, point to him having created a fashion house with firm commercial and creative foundations, that is built to last. But unsurprisingly, that is not the whole story and he is refreshingly candid as we speak in the company of Dimeji Alara, who is not only his fashion director but his aesthetics collaborator and visual touchstone, about the making of this thoroughly modern African luxury brand.

Tocca Jacket, SS2021. Image: Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara

“What I was really interested in wasn’t creating a fashion brand, it was telling stories.” Initially Salam was on a path to film-making, but he abandoned his movie ambitions when he noted the inherent and structural prejudices built into the industry. He expands “two years into my programme I realised I no longer want to be in screenwriting, because the opportunity wasn’t given to all and only a handful could really get a platform.” With clothing he saw an alternative form of communication noting “fashion was quite interesting at an ornamental level but mainly I was drawn to how quickly every single person was able whether they were conscious of it or not, to tell stories about how they felt at that very moment through dress.” It is an oft noted trope that what we wear is the most potent non-verbal communication we share with the world and also with those we meet on an inter-personal level. Even an active disinterest is a statement of intent. For Salam, the idea of rather than convincing people to part with two hours of their time in a darkened auditorium to engage with his vision, but instead co-opting his vision to reflect something of themselves was far the more intriguing direction to pursue. Indeed, film’s loss has proven fashion’s gain, but not without some similar principles in play of narrative arc, dramatis personae and heroic quests being sewn into each piece he creates.

Butterfly Blouse and Delta Skirt SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara

Of Origins and Mandates

Fashion loves an origin story, and in fact often demands that ones involving people of colour are even more dramatic. Who can forget the (very much debunked because it patently wasn’t true) rumour of supermodel Iman having been plucked from obscurity in her previous role as a tribal herds-woman? She is in fact the daughter of well-travelled, educated and urbane Somalian diplomats. Salam has been both lauded and somewhat misrepresented in the bid for editors and writers (often western based or educated) to place him in a neat box assigned to black creatives in terms of both their roots and their consequent influences. `’I am so happy that you are giving me the opportunity to perhaps try being a bit more clear. I often get asked what influenced you? What inspired you? And while it has become such a normal thing to ask a creative or a designer and we rush into answering… There are many many things that come with you that are prior to you and are sometimes beyond your understanding of understanding, So I just want to put it out there that I am an African man that was partially raised in Europe that in adulthood is working in the American space, that speaks Wolof but also speaks French but also speaks English, that works with customers that are Japanese but also some who are Arab and American and European and I am very very enthused and curious about the world.” Dimeji is silently nodding in agreement at what Salam is boldly articulating – that Africa and Africans are not one singular entity or set of experiences and levels of exposure. That not every African’s background includes abject poverty, a paucity of educational opportunities and knowledge and, spoiler alert, requires a dash of fairy-dust by way of western media acknowledgement. If anything, that Salam still finds himself being viewed as an anomaly, speaks to unconscious biases that still exist, in spite of the Summer of Race Reckoning that was 2020. Some writers have been too speedy to place him in Senegal or their own ‘tribal’ version of it, when there exists layers of nuance that are blithely ignored due to his race. The multiplicity of locations both for himself and also for his inspirations is not the exclusive domain of a designer living in a particular locale, or colour. It is in fact reflective of the 21st century, where prior to the pandemic affordable travel coupled with the digital capabilities to travel anywhere via your phone means that inspiration can and is picked up anywhere, that curiosity can be readily sated by all, and that clients can and will come from far and wide.

Celio Jacket SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara

Sukeina is in fact named after Salam’s mother and he adds there are further etymological roots of the name itself: “ when I would ask my grandmother the question what does Sukeina mean she would say it means ‘bright light’ and I would be like okay. And then she would say, ‘When a room doesn’t have a table it is table-less but you can still sit, when it doesn’t have a chair, it is chair-less yet you can still stand’…and she talked at length on the importance of perspective and perception and she felt that when there was no light everything goes missing. But when there is light in the room you can see where the chair is…where everything is and only then can you see the value of all. And I was fascinated by the kindness of it [of the light and it’s role]…That notion kind of stuck with me when the time came to create a company. Not only did I like very much the wording and meaning around it but also the person that I got to know very early in my life was kind of that. While my father had a very important position in the UN and in government and whatnot, my mother was kind of the glue behind it and added things, removed things, strategised. In the end she made him shine.” But beyond being a personal eulogy to the essence of his mother, Salam expands his thesis wider adding : “Sukeina is shining a light on what women truly are and have always been and aren’t always perceived as .They jump very quickly into the everyday motions…and don’t get a chance to turn the focus on themselves and say who am I, what am i, what am I outside of what I do? And what Sukeina is trying to be in a woman’s closet is to create armours, to create outside shells, create directions, create stimulus that remind a woman how incredibly necessary, how incredibly pivotal, how incredibly important and how incredibly key she is, has been and will always be.”

Kyte Cloud Dress SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara

With a brand mandate that is more closely aligned to a broader manifesto of equipping women with the tools for self expression, providing them with aesthetic permission to explore their many selves, and most critically of all, demand that they are fully celebrated as a result, it would be easy to ask pithily how do such lofty ideals and goals translate into apparel. But Salam is not one for hyperbole or empty platitudes and in the collections one sees his creative aims and cultural objectives being fulfilled one piece at a time. Initially lauded for his occasion wear, he steered clear of obvious cliches such as using classic luxe fabrics exclusively. Many of the pieces were made of a silk neoprene. It was an interesting choice as neoprene is often utilised in protective garments and Salam’s decision could be seen as both a comment on a woman requiring her apparel to act as the aforementioned armour, but with the choice of silk blend, still needing to feel luxurious. Contrasting and compelling juxtapositions are another notable feature in Sukeina collections: pieces are sometimes adorned with ostrich plumes, adding flamboyance and an unapologetic celebratory air to proceedings. For Salam whether one is off to a Red Carpet event or celebrating a milestone birthday with family and friends, the pieces act as a frame for the memories made, but must elicit an interior emotion in their movement, feel and ultimately the wearing. Furthermore, in an age where women not only demand but also expect sexual autonomy, even the more overtly sexy pieces hint at revealing oneself on your own terms with tea length dresses with cut aways at the hip bones and sheer panelled body suits with opaque ribbon effect panels. The overall thesis is one of exploration and as Salam says of the Sukeina woman, “she is someone curious about herself but more curious about the world than she is judgmental of it.” It thus follows that clothes that play on silhouette, notions of opaqueness and transparency and hint at power and vulnerability would become wardrobe staples for such a woman.

Cloud Jumpsuit SS2021 Image Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara — Cloud Jumpsuit SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara

Curiously, the ‘Sukeina Woman’, compartmentalising and deconstructing her further, is something that Salam has intentionally avoided, both in his head while designing and in interviews. Like his own personal journey, he does not see customers fitting one sort of lifestyle, location, age or interests. Proof of such was a private soiree held in his honour in Lagos in 2018, when he showed at GTB Fashion Weekend, that intriguingly brought together a cross section of the city’s fashion tribes and beau monde all of whom were as keen to see the clothes and purchase them. For him, the brand does not ascribe to a narrow set of normative concerns and nor does its clients. What he does however, return to are the evolution of notions of self and identity: “I use as the cue the area of emotional dimensions of a woman. So we go back to the woman and ask, is she sexy? Is she straightforward? Is she strict?… My job is to avail myself as a translator of what a woman feels or wants to feel…to display the rhythm of the woman or the vibrato around that woman, whether she is feeling sexy, or feeling motherly or wants to be covered or elusive.” Seeing women as multifarious indicates that Salam is following a recipe that guarantees longevity as many brands get stuck in a design brief silo, speaking to an increasingly smaller set of people or disconnecting altogether with the wants and needs of clients both existing and potential as their lives evolve and locus of concerns changes accordingly. In widening the lens of moods and actively not ascribing to the ‘African fashion’ tag, which in many instances, particularly its most recent iteration, can prove problematic, Sukeina has deftly sidestepped a creative and commercial cul de sac.

Bassari Turtleneck Dress SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt, Styling: Dimeji Alara

Watchwords and Future Plans

We alight on Salam and Alara’s partnership – one which has seen them working together to build upon Sukeina’s initial success and widen its reach and appeal. Although hailing from different disciplines in the fashion system: Alara is Nigerian and was the former editor in chief of Elle South Africa and a noted fashion stylist in his own right whilst Salam has operated firmly in the design space, there are clear synergies: both men are West African Parisiennes now situated in New York City with a clear sense of self and a shared passion for steering conversations forward on African design and aesthetics via Sukeina. One recent move has been distancing themselves from the demi-couture and couture labelling that followed the brand from the outset. Alara expands “We are exploring daywear. Because a sweater, a simple white shirt or a pair of pants can be special.” To buttress the point Sukeina recently created a capsule winter collection entitled Silex that saw them reinterpret winter-warmers for the woman who cares for silhouette and construction as much as she does for heat retention. It was an expansion of a day-wear exploration that had already been seeded in the Spring/Summer 2021 collection that were an immediate hit. The Boyfriend Sweater gets a luxe formal makeover with contrasting copes and sleeves and stiff white collars, mesh pencil skirts could be as easily worn to a meeting or cocktails and leggings are removed from planet basic via the clever inclusion of vertical panels – a trick that also lengthens and slims a leg’s appearance. It also chimes with Salam’s wider mandate of being able to enter a woman’s consciousness and propose ensembles that reflect her mood or greater intent.

Bpyfriend Sweater and Pencil Skirt SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara — Boyfriend Sweater and Pencil Skirt SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt Styling: Dimeji Alara

“I have seen so many collections, so many shows but I think seeing Sukeina for the first time was a big surprise.” Alara reminisces, adding; “I felt it wasn’t just something that you see and you forget. The level of craftsmanship and the level of work that is done on the clothes compared to a lot of the brands that we have out there today, African designers, European or American designers you know…that is what drew me to the brand, and what drew me to Omar is his mind and his level of thinking and the way that he works.” Their collaboration is more than a mutual admiration society. Alara is keen for Sukeina to optimise all the current green shoots in the company’s line of sight and for Salam he now has a professional, creative journeyman who understands the brand’s DNA and his own personal desire to never compromise. Craft, a capstone in much of his work, remains centre stage, but in Alara’s interpretations it is modernised and made relevant for women today.

Bassari Cardigan and Chiffon Pant SS2021 Image Amanda Pratt, Styling: Dimeji Alara

Although the brand is young, Salam is still mindful of legacy building and of Sukeina upholding its core values for years to come. Fashion’s woeful reputation as one of the environment’s worst abusers and contributors to the climate emergency has prompted him to rather than clumsily jump on the sustainability bandwagon, champion mindful purchasing, something which is at the heart of how his collections are conceived and how he anticipates women will wear them. He expands “By going back to creating products that you don’t need to have hundreds of but just ten of because they mean something to you [and], by going back to true craftsmanship with integrity, the true meaning of clothing, clothing that perhaps won’t cost the price of a salad but won’t be exhausting and polluting the planet less will be upheld.” Buying less and only what you will love forever is a mantra that not only those wedded to minimalism can afford to adhere to in our current times, but in Salam’s hands, perhaps because of the kind of pieces he creates, it doesn’t feel like a sentence to be endured. But arguably the most enduring of all Sukeina’s legacy building projects, beyond the brand’s commercial ambitions is challenging dated and inaccurate notions of what a fashion house with an African creative director should be producing or have as it’s central design thesis. Salam adds, “We don’t need to flex and say we are better than anyone. It is not about being better it is about being true to who we are. We are asking politely but firmly for the opportunity to share that with the world as our contribution to humanity.”

Neo Dress SS2021 Image: Amanda Pratt, Styling: Dimeji Alara

The last few years has seen a steady expansion in terms of numbers operating successfully, and celebration in terms of media coverage, of African fashion brands. Furthermore, in response to the growing appetite from consumers globally for African fashion, online retailers such as Industrie Africa, Onchek and Avivere have launched. Africa has gone from being ‘hot right now’ to being ‘too hot to ignore’ and it is a trend that has traveled across other creative disciplines beyond fashion to include jewellery, music and fine art . But for all the commercial wins there is still a darker reality for brands that have African roots, brands such as Sukeina, and it lies with notions of respect, perception and positioning. Throughout our conversation, Salam, a measured, intellectual man of the world, did not talk of a fashion system ‘out to get him’, or of a desire to be on any of the hastily compiled lists of black designers and black owned businesses that emerged in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, but he has had to be deliberate and consistent in his upending of assumptions and crystalline clear in how he presents his brand across all touch-points. There is a growing cadre of creatives who are choosing this modus operandi rather than slogans, hashtags and call out culture to make a name for themselves and their brand, and more pertinently to create a space for existence, without the historic pejorative noise that is the mood music of being black from a global systemic and socioeconomic standpoint. Salam is firmly of the school that his oeuvre will speak for itself. That his raison d’être of being the aider and abettor of women discovering and displaying their many selves and feeling powerful and magnificent in the process is enough. For Salam, real validation doesn’t live in the land of likes, but in the closets of the growing number of women who choose Sukeina pieces as the lens to illustrate their passions, peculiarities and truths

Tocca Gown SS2021 Image Amanda Pratt, Styling: DImeji Alara

Ute Decker: Jewellery Artist and Activist

Posted on December 2, 2020 by mazzi

“I grew up thinking I was not creative at all and it took me probably all the way into my thirties to overcome what I had been led to believe at school.” Ute Decker, jewellery artist and ethical jewellery activist is reminiscing about her earliest creative memories and I am surprised that there isn’t a strong biographical artistic thread. For an artist who since formally launching her brand in 2009 has experienced immense critical acclaim and commercial success with her work being described as ‘wearable works of art’ by the auction house Christie’s, and acquired for the permanent collections of both the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Swiss National Museum in Zurich, it is somewhat puzzling that there were no early indications in her childhood of what was to come. Our Zoom meeting, which takes on the energy of a stimulating conversation with an intellectually curious friend who is as engaged with the world around them as they are with their craft, doesn’t feel like ‘work’ at all. In fact, we both agree that the whole interviewing business would be greatly improved with a glass of Grüner Veltliner, a wine we discover we both love. As our conversation progresses it becomes clear that Decker is so much more than an artist or a pioneer and early advocate of ethical jewellery practises; she has that rare quality of being equally a thinker and a doer. Her sculptural pieces possess the physicality of being made by her own hand, yet her ideological beliefs are imbued in the fact that the materials she uses are wholly ethical and traceable. We discuss her beginnings, her methodology and why she hopes that more in the industry will truly embrace ethical practises, especially if the jewellery industry is to truly shed some of the negative connotations that linger to this day.

Portrait of Ute Decker wearing the Orbit Ring in recycled silver. Image Courtesy of U Decker

A Fearless Point Of View

Decker is unabashed about her beginnings; she says with a smile “I used to call it ‘winging it’ but of course nowadays I would say I am an autodidact…I went to evening classes just to have access to tools.” There is a pragmatism in her rationale for attending evening classes, but it also reveals a creative who is governed by process, knowledge accumulation and self-mastery, indicative of her previous job as a news journalist and researcher. That she came to her craft, via it being a passionate hobby also allowed her a more expansive, unburdened, relationship, something that she is quick to point out: “Making jewellery for myself [resulted] in me making it stronger because I didn’t come out of university with a jewellery degree and then have to earn money. I was completely creatively free.” Then as now, her pieces are not obvious ‘crowd pleasers’ but rather require a wearer who has an equally unapologetic approach to aesthetics as Decker. Indeed, bestsellers such as the Infinity and Orbit collections sit comfortably on the nexus of sculpture and adornment, and could easily be at home on a mantel shelf as they are on a wrist or finger.

Infinity Spiral Ring in Fairtrade Gold. Image Courtesy of U Decker

Modern life has made many industries increasingly youth focused. We have become conditioned to saving our noisiest praise for young prodigies. Subsequently, creatives of all ages lose sleep thinking of ways to capture the eyeballs online and the money in real life of young consumers. However, Decker took a different approach: first and foremost she ensured her honoured her truth and pleased herself, she adds cheerily “I made very large sculptural pieces that commercially are a complete no-no..but I already had my own character, my own language. I didn’t want to please anybody.” This approach proved critical in tapping into a powerful and oft ignored demographic “ A lot of my clients are mature strong women” she notes when I ask her about who is drawn most to her work. By appealing to women like herself she ironically reflects our contemporary love affair with ‘relate-ability’, but in Decker’s case it happened organically rather than as part of a marketing strategy. Most pertinently, it has resulted in cementing, relatively quickly a client base that is neither driven by trend or, because they statistically earn more money, governed entirely by cost. Among her early collectors was the late architect Zaha Hadid, and the former Serpentine Gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones was another admirer of her work. But beyond attracting celebrity clientele and creative cognoscenti acclaim, her work connected on a meta-level. Formally launched in a group show in 2009, and significantly after the 2008 economic crash, it reflected a global yearning for jewellery that had depth of meaning. It also came at a time when there was a desire for original voices who could create something that stood apart from the offerings in the high jewellery meccas of Paris and New York.

Two Unicorns Rings in recycled silver. Image Courtesy of U Decker

On Inspirations and Methodology

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Decker’s atelier is situated in London’s Cockpit Arts, a jewellery and design hub tucked between the city’s historic jewellery district of Hatton Garden and the leafy legal heartland of the Inns of Court of Holborn. Decker, who is originally from Germany was drawn to the space because of its sense of artistic community in a large sprawling city. However, although self-taught her design process is influenced profoundly by principles drawn from eastern traditions: “Are you familiar with Ensō?” She asks before continuing “I try to work as with Japanese calligraphy, with the Ensō it is a circle that you draw…you have to be an apprentice and practise it for twelve years before you can put your name to it. I think that kind of practice is how I work. When I start off with the garden wire, I work until l have something that speaks to me and I am happy with and then I keep making the same piece, over and over again in brass. I work it out until I no longer have to think of the process and my hands now know by themselves. Once I have an intuitive feel, rather than doing and thinking through a lot of things, I make the final piece in metal, in one go. Like calligraphy, it needs to have that flow and dynamism and a natural end. And even if a client said I would love that brooch in gold or smaller or bigger I would still go back to the brass, to get my hands in the flow again. So it might take a few days. Sometimes the lines won’t speak to me and I will work on it for months and then just by chance I walk past a piece, pick it up, do one thing and there it is.” A process such as this is seemingly at odds with the western driven bottom line, one where a bestselling design would be churned out with celerity with the maximising of profits at the forefront of all activities. But like with much Decker does, it is challenging but ultimately rewarding. Supreme self-discipline in the repetitious nature of initial work is coupled with a spiritual harmony of intrinsically knowing when the piece is ready. As with the Ensō, the goal is mastery borne out of a lack of inhibition.

Chaos Neck Piece in Fairtrade Gold. Image Courtesy of U Decker

Warming to the conversation on eastern philosophies and beliefs she continues: “I am very interested in Zen Buddhism and I have tried meditating but I am not a practising Buddhist. In Zen, it is very much the idea of creating with an empty mind. So I sit there without any preconceived ideas. Without thinking, without an aim and without a goal for the end. My work is much more about a sentiment or a sensibility so I never have a concept in mind before, it is only later something might come.” She also invites her collectors to embrace a similar notion, where preconceived ideas are left at the door and instead they engage with a piece ‘empty’ and wait to respond to the emotions it might elicit. It is poetic and places Decker’s work more in the jewellery-artist category than the conventional jewellery designer. Of the distinction between the two she adds: “I don’t say I am a jewellery artist because I feel it sounds slightly pretentious. I tend to say I make sculptural pieces…or I hold out my hand or my neck and say, that is what I do. I try not to define it…If you consider that art it is art if you consider it jewellery, it is jewellery. It is about bringing your own perspective.”

Shadows Earrings in Bi-Metal (recycled silver and Fairtrade Gold) Image: Jamie Trounce

Perhaps because of her circuitous route into jewellery, Decker steers away from labels or classifications being applied to her work. When I ask her of influences she pauses before responding “I admire the Padua School who are also quite minimalist but I don’t see myself as part of an artistic creative or jewellery school. But I would see myself as part of the ethical jewellery movement.” The Padua School under the unofficial leadership of Mario Pinton were at the vanguard of experimental gold smithery in the 1950s and 60s and like Decker, members such as Giampaolo Babetto were drawn to creating exploratory pieces that could be seen as both sculpture and jewellery with a minimalist sensibility. Intriguingly, the Japanese writer Jun’ichirō Tanizaki also provides ideas that fuel her work: “I have read‘In Praise of Shadows’ by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and although it has several political issues there are certain sentiments in the book that I agree with. Tanizaki describes how when you go into a Japanese house it is so empty but then the play of shadows is so powerful. Something so minimalist: the wind rippling through the trees, a gentle wave rolling in the ocean, looking into the fire…Those are the simplest smallest minimalist experiences…and because the process is so condensed and reduced that makes them the more powerful.” Relating it back to her practice she concludes: “I think quite often with jewellery people are thinking of where can they put another little diamond or another little swirl. For me, when a piece is done I am thinking what else can I take away to make it less busy.” This doing away with, condensing, distilling, until, one is left with a piece’s true essence is at the heart of all of her designs.

Curling Crest of A Wave in recycled silver. Image Courtesy of U Decker — Curling Crest of A Wave Ring in recycled silver. Image Courtesy of U Decker

The idea of embedded energy is another concept that for Decker has great resonance, citing Alexander Calder she expands “…what really gives me joy looking at his work is you see little images and videos of how he makes things and that joy that he brings across. And every time I look at one of his pieces I see that maker’s smile.” Making and the physicality and personality she brings to pieces is what posits Decker’s work most in the jewellery-artist category. “My hands think in three dimensions so I need to actually make and experiment” she says adding “I never draw anything. I couldn’t draw this (she gestures to her wrist, where she is wearing an iteration of the Orbit bracelet),…I just play and experiment and by the end of it something completely different will fit.” She is happy to see her pieces as wearable sculptures but it was only when the opportunity of making a large scale piece for a client came about that she realised how wedded she was to her particular process: “It was a wonderful budget and I thought ‘Yeah, I always wanted to make larger sculptures and here is an opportunity, someone is commissioning me!’ But I must say that the process was less satisfying because I had to hand it over to a fabricator. I was no longer the person…for me it is really important that my hands, that I am involved, it is that joy in the creative process.” Just as with Calder, her energy, her essence, indeed her joy, are intrinsic to the completed work. “I don’t think I am a designer because it can’t be replicated. I can’t give it to someone else never mind do so myself.” Again, she resists easy categorisation: “I actually find it very difficult with the nomenclature thing as well, and it seems to be [more about ]what people are thinking.” And as already explored Decker is loath to allow external gazes to qualify or quantify who she is or what she does. She smiles before finally conceding “Jewellery artist is probably the closest term. There is an artistic expression. There are some thoughts and constructs and concepts that while not at the beginning of my process are certainly part of it…that is probably the main reason I would say jewellery artist. But I am definitely also a maker.” Indeed, her work is represented at one of London’s most renowned galleries for jewellery-artists, Elisabetta Cipriani.

ManRay Swan in Bi-Metal (recycled silver and Fairtrade Gold) Image Courtesy of U Decker — ManRay Swan Ring in Bi-Metal (recycled silver and Fairtrade Gold) Image Courtesy of U Decker

Activism and Jewellery

Jewellery was never going to be just about adornment given Decker’s background. “I am very politically interested, I studied Political Economics at the University of Hamburg, lived in Paris, and spent some time at the UN in Vienna and was involved with the climate talks” Unlikely to content herself with trotting out superficial statements to her conscience or her clients’, Decker wanted to ensure that her jewellery was as equally imbued with her values as it was with her aesthetics. She expands: “Being part of a bigger picture, working with fairly traded gold, being part of the whole earth and community is important to me. I don’t just want to make art for art’s sake. I like to express certain sentiments but also be part of the solution of the issues that are important to me…When I studied there was a whole course on the meaning of work. Who am I in this world? How do I fit in? Do I fit in to the anonymous production or do I want my work to be more meaningful to myself and to the greater context?” It was these questions, coupled with her news journalism background that prompted her into deeper investigations on ethical mining, sourcing and production. The private endeavour resulted in a rejection of using gemstones: “The Kimberley Process ( the global agreement that came about in light of negative publicity on so called blood or conflict diamonds) is not worth the paper it is typed on. There are no ethical diamonds, there are no fair trade diamonds, there are some that are better than others like Canadian diamonds with more traceability, but…” She trails off and shrugs, incredulous that the general public has by and large swallowed the notion of ethical diamonds when many gemstones for the most part, still come from parts of the world which have either historically or are currently in the midst of political, socioeconomic and human rights tumult. It is for this reason that Decker herself continues to not use gemstones in any of her collections and subsequently focused her investigations on precious metals.

Calligraphy Rings in Fairtrade Gold. Image: Jamie Trounce

We alight on the first online ethical jewellery directory that she created, that was previously housed on her brand’s website but now has a permanent home on ethicalmaking.org which is a partnership between Decker and the Incorporation of Goldsmiths, Scotland, she adds: “Metals have an incredible footprint, it’s an incredibly dirty business whether it is from the environmental perspective or in terms of human rights and exploitation…It’s an absolute horror story. And when I read about that horror story my first reaction was ‘Oh my God, I cannot be part of this. I cannot use these materials.’ Surely there must be some gold or some silver that has been mined in a more environmentally friendly fashion… I didn’t start off thinking I am going to build the world’s most comprehensive ethical jewellery directory. It was just one piece after the next piece…I put it all online and that opened up conversations.”

Chaos Brooch and Earrings in Fairtrade Gold. Image: Jamie Trounce

This is not to say that her activities were met with universal support within the jewellery community. In spite of sustainability and ethical having recently not so much become buzz terms as mantras that all must adhere to, there was push-back. Reflecting back on those early beginnings she relates: “I talked to other jewellers and some of them were like, ‘Yeah, I might be interested.’ But at the beginning there was a lot of hostility from other jewellers because once you start talking about ethical you open up a can of worms…. If you say ‘ethical’ [jewellery] there must conversely be unethical jewellery. So the jewellery world didn’t like it.” Of the ongoing trend for jewellery houses both small and independent and large conglomerates to tout their ethical credentials she warns that consumers should be “aware of ‘greenwashing’, which I now think is the biggest danger… what we have now is a proliferation of claims and the Responsible Jewellery Council which already sounds fabulous and if you go on the website you would think you were on the website of Greenpeace… but in fact it is just an industry association…all the big mining companies and a lot of the big diamond companies are in there and now everybody says ‘our diamonds are sourced responsibly Kimberley Process and our metals whatever are also responsibly certified or we are getting it from a Responsible Jewellery Council source.’ Both of them are utterly meaningless but as a consumer you think ‘Oh, fantastic all of them are sourcing ethically.”

Rolling Waves Moonlight Brooch in Fairtrade Gold. Image Courtesy of U Decker

Clarity of information is something of particular importance to Decker who in addition to her jewellery practice lectures and continues to lobby for greater traceability of where metals are from for both creatives such as herself, seeking to be ethical in their sourcing and consumers who want to be assured that what they are choosing to purchase is truly ethical. On her own journey one pivotal connection was with Greg Valerio an agrarian, artisanal mining and ethical trade activist. “Someone told me about Greg Valerio who really is the hero of the whole story. He comes from a human rights background and started an ethical human rights shop…. he also found out about a small mining co=operative in Columbia called Oro Verde – and they worked on the same values and principles such as re-foresting and such… And then he went to the Fairtrade Foundation and said ‘guys you must get on board, we must have something certified…because there are so many ethical claims’. So that is how the first fair trade gold came about.” Decker is also eager to qualify the difference between Fairtrade and fair-trade, something most consumers wouldn’t immediately differentiate between; “It is also very important to note that the word fair trade with a hyphen or small letters is not protected. But Fairtrade one word and capitalised is…Fairtrade standards involves women’s rights and also economic rights, strict environmental standards and the money is invested, so we are paying a fair price but we are also paying a Fairtrade premium. And that premium the community can then decide what they need….So it is the community that jointly decides what they need most. It is investing in schools and people need to understand it is not some kind of ‘aid’, it is paying a bloody fair price.” Her and Valerio continue to raise awareness and campaign, often appearing on panels together.

Rose Ring in Fairtrade Gold. Image: Jamie Trounce

Empowerment, Conscious Consumption and Future Plans

For Decker empowerment does not stop with elucidating stakeholders of the ethical jewellery movement. It also comes via her invitation to wearers in the co-creation process. “I give my pieces relatively abstract names. I have a thought of what they make me feel or what they remind me of but then the title is abstract enough to invite others in.” She uses her collection Orbit to illustrate the point asking me what I think it reminds me of before concluding, “So when I said orbit, I was thinking in terms of the solar system but you were thinking of chemical elements and atoms and that is beautiful…individual empowerment and individual expression combine in my jewellery.”

Orbit Bracelet in recycled silver. Image Courtesy of U Decker

Occasionally, with her private clients the tables will be turned. She reminisces, “There is one wonderful collector in New York who commissioned me for a piece…her brief was ‘wild and abandon’ but I have to be able to type in it’.” The process took a year but it was precisely because Decker had a plethora of ideas that she explored fully before settling on the one that she felt was best. Inevitably, she returned to her eastern philosophical principles adding: “There is a concept in Japanese philosophy aesthetic called Ma, which could be translated as emptiness…for us in the west emptiness is a negative. But the concept there is if it is empty, it has all the possibilities opening up.” Allowing time to be inspired, to play, to dream and ultimately make are key in her creative process, as she waits on ideas to have their full fruition. Clients in turn are encouraged to exercise patience and trust that the beautiful synergies and work will emerge. It can also ultimately result in a less exhausted earth as we are all forced to consume less and not expect every desire and whim to be met immediately.

Silk Folds Bracelet in Recycled Silver. Image: Elke Bock

As our conversation comes to an end I pose to Decker whether she sees jewellery as another pit-stop in her portfolio career or the arena in which she intends to stay. She pauses before responding: “We could say jewellery is totally unnecessary, we have enough stuff in this world and with the materials and the issues, do I need to make jewellery? But I think making very few pieces, making pieces that count, that are not just in and out of fashion before you can blink, is worthwhile. Sometimes clients come and say ‘oh yes, I bought this at your very first exhibition and I have been wearing it all the time’, and hearing that gives me so much joy.” Decker has a mind that is so agile and a seemingly insatiable curiosity and desire to share knowledge and beauty, that it feels unlikely that jewellery in and of itself will be an adequate framework for what. Has already been a considerable body of work. However, jewellery redefined and deconstructed within her broad locus of concerns and passions has become a much more nuanced proposition in and of itself. All creative disciplines need a dose of disruption to truly evolve, Decker is doing this for jewellery one sculptural, beautiful, ethically produced piece at a time.

Articulation Neck Piece in recycled silver. Image Courtesy of U Decker

Rabun The Radiant: A Career Observed, Part 2

Posted on November 13, 2020 by mazzi

“The most important thing that you can do is strengthen your design language. It takes time. It takes a lot of patience and practice, sitting down and asking yourself the same questions; why am I designing jewellery? Why do I do this and what do I want to say with my work?” It is mid afternoon on a surprisingly hot early Autumn’s day in London and Jacqueline Rabun, is in a reflective mood as our discussion moves on from her beginnings ( which you can read more about in the previous post) to legacies, impact and the work still to be done. When I ask what is the raison d’être to why she continues three decades on to design and create jewellery and objects for her legion of collectors and fans globally; unsurprisingly for an interview subject who has proved both profoundly sensitive and ethereally gracious, it is not a case of making adornments for the sake of. “I believe that it is important for jewellery to make you feel empowered, uplifted and calm. It needs to make you feel inspired and that’s really important in my work. [Subsequently] I also try to keep my energy in a certain place because I know when you are creating something, the idea needs to be born with the right energy. And when an idea is born out of the right energy, the world will embrace it.” It is a truism that would resonate with many creatives, the proverbial reaping what you sow, and thus the need to sow with the right ‘head and heart space’ but Rabun’s assertion goes beyond the jewellery she designs to the spaces it inhabits both before and after purchase. In this second part of a special retrospective, we look at the myriad of ways in which she has played the role of pioneer in the jewellery industry, how recent conversations on inclusivity have brought challenges and opportunities and how she sees her contribution evolving in the years to come.

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Portrait of Jacqueline Rabun, Image: Courtesy of J Rabun

Changing the Marketplace

Think High Jewellery and one’s mind wonders to rarefied rooms upholstered in tasteful creams and beige with impossibly coiffed assistants hovering to attend to your needs and discretely placed security, ensuring you don’t do anything dastardly. For the habitual client this set up with its unsaid codes of conduct might be easy to navigate, but for a freethinker like Rabun it was stifling and desperately in need of change. In many ways reflecting the seminal 1998 essay “Welcome to the Experience Economy” published in the Harvard Business Review by B Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore which stated that ‘An experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage and goods as the props to engage individual customers in a way that creates a memorable event.’ Rabun’s stand alone jewellery store in Belgravia ( a first for a person of colour) was very much a retail event. Situated in a converted mews house, the interiors riffed on the domestic luxury experience, with a hanging canopy of plants, and jewellery positioned in unexpected places, such as inside an antique desk, ready to be ‘discovered’ by the browsing client. The store itself did away with the burly security guard at the front door and customers could wander around with a piece on their body and get a ‘feel’ for it in a seemingly homely setting. The space also opened its doors to artists with exhibitions, dinners and talks all part of the calendar of events. She adds “I wanted the store to be welcoming and a place where you were transformed the minute you walked through the door. I wanted the overwhelming feeling that you took away to be a sense of well being. A lot of clients would come in and they would say, ‘ooh I don’t want to leave and go out into the world’ because it was very calm. We were very conscious about everything, we always burned sandalwood for instance as sandalwood purified the air, basically it was about touching all of the senses in every way.” Of course now, we have gotten used to this sort of set up: from the Matches.com townhouse in Carlos Place in Mayfair and the Burberry flagship store in Regent Street and countless others in other global cities with their gallery shows, concerts and cups of tea and wine dispensed as much as any item we might wish to wear. However, actualising this in the mid noughties, Rabun was arguably one of the first, and particularly so in the jewellery sector.

Interior of Jacqueline Rabun Store, Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Rabun is passionate about architecture and it has had a profound effect on her jewellery practice, both in terms of inspiration and how she presents her work. “I really love John Lautner…If you live in a John Lautner house it represents living as a free spirit and that is my attraction to it.” She notes of the Californian architect whose light flooded designs have inspired many since. She adds “Richard Neutra gives you the same feeling, it is that school of architecture that was centred around case studies about how we live , and how are we going to live in the future, [and] that is how they were thinking. Now when you look at those houses they are just as modern and so many architects have been inspired by that way of living. However, ultimately those houses for me represent freedom, serenity and the ideal way to live.” In her own way, Rabun has enthused similar concept into her retail spaces. When she moved operations to her loft-cum-atelier in Clerkenwell, the guiding principles of light filled spaces that were simultaneously welcoming and calm, was adhered to. And as is the way when what you’re offering is truly special both spaces had extensive features in World of Interiors and Rabun herself was invited by the global design and furniture pioneer store, Habitat to curate a space in their store that reflected her design aesthetic.

Jacqueline Rabun Clerkenwell Studio: Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Finally, another area where Rabun is considered a pioneer is in the popularising of naming collections and not just ‘star turn’ pieces, suites or the gemstones utilised themselves. Reflecting on her long-term collaboration with Georg Jensen she notes that “Nicholas (Manville, Chief Creative Officer at Georg Jensen) said I was the first designer to start naming their collections and he said that you’re the only designer at Georg Jensen that has a story to tell that is emotional around your work. No one else does it.” In seeking to put a name to the emotional landscape that a jewellery series inhabits and the feelings it solicits and not just the gemstones involved or the pieces created, Rabun charted new ground for what has become standard practice today.

The Mercy Series. Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Challenging Seasons

A career as long as Rabun’s does not occur without incident. Both on a global level; witnessing recessions, pandemics, conversations on racism and gender parity and inclusivity, as well as on a personal level: building and maintaining a business, raising a family and spending many years away from home. Inevitably, we alight on the topic of race, an issue that has been re-ignited with the murder of George Floyd and the unprecedented protests that occurred in its wake, but as Rabun points out, none of this is new: “African-Americans particularly have always had it hard because of the history of slavery in America. We really have had to fight for equality and the right to simply express ourselves. We have had to fight for the bare minimum.” When I ask her about how the recent protests, online debates and discourses affect the jewellery industry and the challenges therein her response is refreshingly frank. “I think that it has to start with us.” Expanding on her thesis Rabun adds “We have to develop our voice around our work. It has to be emotive… I think that is the big starting point…Also I really believe it is your experience and the road you travel down that actually develops your design skills and even those things that are negative such as rejection and being overlooked can actually be the most powerful fuel.” A lot of the discourses have been about inclusion based on past injustices and structural prejudices that work against people of colour. However, Rabun also points out that once space has been found at the proverbial table, the offering has to be compelling if it is to be successful long term. It is a piquant reminder that getting attention, press, accolades and even public apologies is very different to building a commercially viable and successful business. In our age of chasing likes, fame and mentions her approach which puts the work, development of a unique voice and building the client base back in the forefront feels almost novel.

Black Love Ring in Oxidised Silver. Image, Courtesy of J Rabun

This is not to say that her work has not been influenced by or responded to race and racial issues. Her ‘Black Love’ series ,designed in 2015 “was a symbolic gesture around the injustices met out to African Americans and was a response in particular to 2014, when so many young men were being murdered. It was also focused around the idea that we as black people simultaneously bring so much actual love, creativity and joy Into the world but also need to find space to live and to find the beauty in that struggle, which is not easy.” To evoke these varied notions Rabun reimagined the classic heart classic motif: “It is made from two seed forms as the seed is also a symbol of new beginnings and life itself. The seeds come together to form a heart shape and when they come together they cradle into one another.” The series is available in oxidised silver which takes on a black appearance, yellow and white gold, and in light of the tumultuous events of this year has gained added poignancy. She also hoped it would encourage greater self-love for black people, who could wear the pieces as one would a talisman, reminding them of how amazing, precious and valued they are in a world that systemically is designed to often make them feel the opposite.

Black Love Pendant in 18kt Yellow Gold. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Rabun is quick to correct a misconception that hers has always been a charmed existence, thus making her out of touch with practitioners, particularly those of colour, currently struggling. “I was thinking about this, this morning. When I was younger, I remember that with my parents we never left the house unless we were immaculate and shiny which is quite a lot for a small person….[but] 1960s America was very racist so if we walked out the door looking our let’s say Sunday Best, that was our armour. They could hate us if they wanted to because we were black but they couldn’t get us on anything else…. So I obviously can understand what people are feeling, younger designers…I will speak about the jewellery world because in some ways it is a little bit more challenging than fashion as an industry. I think the art of patience and perseverance is really important and I think developing a strong design language, a strong voice, and imagery around your work is crucial. Fortunately, we now have amazing social media channels where you can do that. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune and I think that is what is so great about the moment that we are living in; you can have your own vision and your own world and you can express it on your platform and no one can stop you from doing that. And you can find your customers directly too. But I do think the most important thing is just developing your very strong identity so that when people see your ring for example they know it’s you. They don’t need your name. If you just put a piece of jewellery on the table they know. That is when you are winning to me.”

Beautiful Ring in 18kt White and Yellow Gold. Image Courtesy of J Rabun — Beautiful Ring in 18kt White and Yellow Gold and Pave Diamonds. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Regarding the 2008 recession which hit hard in the jewellery industry community, she reminisces “Yes, it was a challenging time for me and my business but it was also great time for me to focus on my intention. On how I move forward with my business. Also I had more time to create new collections and I also took time to just research and come up with a new way to approach my craft. But I did have a few collections that were quite commercial and they kept my business going which included the Alphabet Series and also the Wyatt and Beautiful Series. I think with any business there is always going to be ups and downs and challenging times. It is just a case of figuring out how do you ride through the storm to get to the sunshine? I think that is the challenge, and if you do it gracefully all will work out as it is meant to.” In many ways it takes courage and tenacity to not be overwhelmed or fatigued by structural injustices, but Rabun’s whole career has been underpinned by a determined pursuit of excellence regardless of the obstacles she may find in her path. When I ask her of who in the current crop of black jewellery designers she is enamoured by she replies with a smile; “Emefa Cole is great. When I look at her work you can feel a lot of emotion and you can feel that she has a very distinct vision about jewellery, that she is really focused, that she has got her own thing going on she has a very clear language and you can see that she is developing it and it is beautiful.”

Alphabet Series in 18kt Yellow Gold. Image Courtesy of J Rabun — Alphabet Series in 18kt Yellow Gold and Pave Diamonds. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Rabun also cites a memorable event where she met the feted jewellery designer Vivianna Torun as giving her a sense of perspective and a real life exemplar of resilience and its power. “I met Vivianna Torun during the centenary celebrations for Georg Jensen in 2004 and at the time she wasn’t very well so we weren’t sure she was going to be attending the press conference and later that evening the gala…Other jewellery designers were there including Nana Ditzel but then suddenly you could feel this very beautiful energy near the door and we all turned around and looked and there she was. She had such an amazing aura that the whole room went silent and…this powerful positive spirit just came in to the room.” She pauses, before adding “Some people have that ability to shift energy when they walk in the room and she was one of those people one hundred percent. I met her and and I met her daughter Marcia who is amazing as well and we had a lovely moment together where we took a tour of the exhibition that was being held at the National Museum in Copenhagen.” Torun’s work was featured prominently in the centenary exhibition celebrating the Danish heritage house, as were other designers including Rabun herself. She concludes: “It was just beautiful… the three of us at the exhibition…It was one of those moments where you know it was meant to be.” The meeting was especially poignant for Rabun as she had long admired Torun: “The only designer who I have actually bought their pieces is Vivianna Torun, I think for so many reasons I connect with it. I love it aesthetically, I love her work ethic and I love that she was courageous. She was a Swedish woman who married an African American man in the 60s and lived in France when that wasn’t such an easy thing to do. She had mixed race children and they got a lot of abuse and through all of that she continued designing. It would have been so easy for her to just stop, of course…and I know that she struggled..but she just persevered through it all and then left to live in Jakarta and set up a studio there whilst still designing for Georg Jensen and at this studio they created all her pieces so the community was thriving too.” Purpose and fortitude are a running theme and preferred connection point for Rabun, who in many ways possesses the same qualities.

Wyatt Love Cuff in 18kt Gold. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

A Living Legacy

With numerous professional achievements under her belt, and zero desire to rest on her laurels, Rabun has been paying a lot of attention to her legacy and leveraging her influence to assist the next generation. Prior to the spread of Covid19 and the ensuing global lockdown, a trip to India precipitated a spiritual re-awakening, one which gave her a vision of how she could best use her talents to serve the greatest good. Collaboration and the power it has to unlock talent, create wealth and break down barriers to inclusion was at the forefront of her mind. She elaborates: “I do feel a responsibility to the next generation and mentorship is something that I do with a few design students…but we can definitely do more, particularly between African-Americans and Africans. I think that it’s very important that we collaborate on ideas that empower us and other people of colour in the world.” She has visited Senegal frequently and a recent trip to Nigeria and a trip to Ghana that was sadly postponed due to the pandemic were the beginnings of a framework she was creating to develop greater opportunities for cross pollination of ideas and expansion of opportunities.

The season of self-reflection has also brought a strong tug to her country of origin, which is on the cusp of a potentially seismic change politically [since this interview took place, Joe Biden has won the US Presidential Election] She notes: “This is an important time for us politically. It is a very difficult time, it is a very challenging time but it is also the time for the work, for our creativity, for our talent, for our skills. I think that this is the moment. We are seeing changes and I am going to remain optimistic and say we will see more.” She is currently re-evaluating her own potential role in that story and is in touch with a number of her peers who share a similar vision such as architect David Adjaye who returned to Accra after decades spent in the UK and US: “I think it is important that David has gone back to Ghana, to be part of that new story, and it is my intention to spend part of my time in America as well. I have been in England for thirty years but I think it is an important time for me to perhaps inspire the next generation of young jewellery designers or young women that probably have no idea that it is possible to enter this realm. If I can open that door for them that [would be] very powerful and I think it is my duty to do that.”

Carl Aubock X Jacqueline Rabun Collaboration for SigmarGallery. Image courtesy of J Rabun — Carl Aubock X Jacqueline Rabun Collaboration for Wallpaper Handmade and Sigmar Gallery. Image courtesy of J Rabun

Although it has always been about the jewellery, and her work in its development, refinement and expansion of parameters speaks to this, Rabun has paradoxically always been so much more than a jewellery designer. For designers younger than her, she is an emblem of what it looks like to be at the top of your game, without compromising your vision or pandering to systems or individuals that might think less of you by virtue of your gender or colour or both. Her humility regardless of her position as the world’s most famous and lauded black jewellery designer, is seen in how she neither courts or is occupied by the trappings of fame. She is grateful for recognition but her eyes visibly light up when talking about the work itself, how it has developed or the themes explored in particular series. She is equally animated when speaking of the. transformative power jewellery has had on clients’ lives, how a piece has become a much treasured family heirloom, or takes a wearer back to particular point in time when they were happiest. She also loves setting herself a new challenge, as her continued interest in designing objects illustrates. She has always designed objects for her own personal use, but the remit has expanded, and was seen most notably in a collaboration for Wallpaper Magazine’s Handmade Project with the Vienna based studio of Carl Aubock overseen by Nina Hertig of Sigmar Gallery. The finished pieces were first exhibited at London Design Festival in 2017, and Rabun is set to do more projects in a similar vein in the future. Tellingly, her Instagram biography describes her as an ‘artist’, and this feels the more accurate nomenclature. Jacqueline Rabun is an artist and jewellery just happens to be her preferred medium. Henri Matisse famously said “Creativity takes courage.” and courage has anchored the ethos and governed the methodology of Rabun’s career so far. It takes guts to move continents, without a golden parachute or a bulging contact book and build a successful business doing what you love. Coupled with undeniable talent and a quiet confidence that destiny was guiding her steps and she became an unstoppable force. Personal preferences aside, the best art and the greatest artists attempt to express truth and share truths with the world. Rabun, ever generous invites us to do so twice; first in the selecting of the truths we wish to reveal with our jewellery choices, and secondly in inviting us in the wearing, to share those truths with others.

Rabun The Radiant: A Career Observed, Part 1

Posted on September 16, 2020 by mazzi

“I started designing jewellery that spoke to me, because there wasn’t much jewellery I wanted to wear…I wasn’t really sure where it was going of course, but I knew it would find its place” reflects Jacqueline Rabun in the first of two Zoom calls in which we discuss her three decades and counting career in jewellery design. Immediately evident in her opening answer is the power of intent married with application. The impetus for designing began with her, she was neither creating with an ideal client in mind or at the mercies of a ‘market’ to court or appease. This unapologetic approach has brought dividends although not without challenges along the way. Rabun is motivated by a passion and desire to actualise an alternative design offering, one that is rooted in her own experiences and values. It is this distinct point of view that has seen her contribution to the jewellery world not only unequivocal, but also a catalyst for opening the doors to wider participation in the industry as a whole.

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Mercy Ring, Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun — Mercy Ring in White Gold , Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Of course, it is easy to eulogise from the vantage point of a career of her length and breadth which contains within it the ‘holy grail’ of commercial success, critical acclaim and continued resonance in the here and now from peers and design aficionados alike. But Rabun’s is a story that is first and foremost anchored by jewellery that found it’s way onto the bodies of many and intriguingly varied clients; from rock stars and supermodels to business leaders and members of royal families all over the world. Coupled with this is her prodigious work ethic and a tenacity that hasn’t let setbacks, curveballs or racism, derail her from her goals. Rabun is softly spoken, with an accent that sits squarely in the mid-Atlantic but without any of the international-jet-set affectations that many have come to associate with such. Dressed in a deceptively simple yet perfectly cut white tunic, her hair pulled back, skin clear and eyes animated, she appears the embodiment of a woman seated confidently and elegantly in her power, who hasn’t been discombobulated by the uncertain, pandemic ridden times we are all living in. When I note this she laughs: “I carry on as I always have” which for her is working largely from home as she straddles her work for her eponymous brand and her long term collaboration with Scandinavian heritage jewellery house, Georg Jensen.

An Autodidact Finds Her Voice and Place

Rabun surprisingly did not train as a jeweller: “I studied fashion design at the Fashion Institute in San Francisco, that was the world I always thought that I would be a part of… My mother taught me to sew, and I actually knew how to cut a pattern and make my own clothes from a really early age. But as I was studying fashion design something came over me and I felt as though this wasn’t my world anymore… the fashion industry is amazing but I guess I was quite sensitive at the time…so I stopped and by pure accident I started working at a jewellery gallery, a very beautiful one in Los Angeles , called the M Gallery and it was like no other space I had ever been to.” In many ways the M Gallery was the perfect training ground for Rabun’s own as yet conceived design practice. Proprietor Michael Dawkins had a curatorial approach, with collections by jewellery-artists, architects and other interdisciplinary practitioners that didn’t fit the classic high jewellery mould, finding a home in his destination space that attracted an eclectic clientele who were drawn to contemporary and directional pieces. At home, inspired by what she saw, Rabun started experimenting: “I started teaching myself: first how to design and then how to actually make. I am a better designer than maker, but I can do it if I have to” she adds laughing.

Romance precipitated a move to London in 1989 and it was here that her processes and her ideas solidified. Her first collection, Raw Elegance, launched in 1990 was a commercial triumph with Barney’s New York an immediate stockist – unheard of for a new designer, never mind a female black one. Rabun herself is uncomfortable with using the term ‘collection’, with its undertones of ‘in today, out tomorrow’, and prefers the term ‘series’ which hints to a continuum of states and a revisiting and exploration of themes, a notion that ties in with both her first and all her consequent bodies of work. Speaking of what it was that drew in a retail behemoth like Barney’s and the slew of luxury stores around the world to stock her immediately she expands: “I think it was because it was unlike any other jewellery they were stocking at the time. It was quite masculine but there were feminine undertones. It was very organic and natural using shapes and forms that follow the lines of the body and it was just very different for that moment.” Crucially, Raw Elegance coincided with the genesis of reimagining gender boundaries in fashion and beauty and that was to be a hallmark of the 90s: Calvin Klein’s unisex fragrance CKOne, was the scent of the decade, Jean-Paul Gaultier had a mixed gender fashion show in Paris for his Spring/Summer 1994 collections and indie bands with effete lead singers such as Blur with their anthem to blurred gender role boundaries Girls & Boys ruled the airwaves. For the jewellery world Raw Elegance was an early presentation of similar ideas – themes that many jewellery brands have since explored and developed.

A Selection of Pieces from Raw Elegance Series. Image: Courtesy of J Rabun

London in the 90s was arguably the coolest city on earth, with a creative renaissance not seen since the swinging 60s. It was the decade that saw the dominance of British fashion designers with John Galliano at Dior, Alexander McQueen at Givenchy and Stella McCartney at Chloe dictating how the world dressed. The Young British Artists or YBAs as they were collectively known, all featured in Sensation, an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in 1997 that placed fine art at the heart of pop-culture. In the jewellery world, Rabun alongside Shaun Leane designed pieces that were in diametric opposition to the ostentatious 80’s aesthetic and resonated with subcultures in what was then an edgy East London and bourgeois West London bohemians alike. Looking back at the cross-pollinating and dynamic energy of the city then Rabun remarks “when I first moved to London in about a week I met Judy Blame through a friend and he loved my work, so he immediately used a couple of my pieces for Neneh Cherry.” The fortuitous meeting with the legendary uber=stylist brought her into contact with others luminaries. “It all happened very organically, I have to be honest. It was all very word of mouth because of course we didn’t have social media, but pretty quickly I was connected with a few people at I-D Magazine and I had some articles in I-D, The Face, Dazed, thinking back I had a lot of publicity” The coup de grace was landing the cover of British Vogue’s September 1992 issue with Linda Evangelista adorned in pieces from the now extended Raw Elegance Series. “I guess that was one of the little signs that were a cosmic okay, you’re moving in the right direction. Because actually when you start off in a career where you haven’t actually studied and trained and you have taught yourself, you always question whether you are doing the right thing.” From there, her star was fully in ascendant, with musicians particularly drawn to her work. Madonna, Whitney Houston, U2 and Lenny Kravitz were just some of her many A List clients. Living in London, which at the time was the de facto laboratory of new ideas across multiple creative disciplines had an undoubtedly positive effect on Rabun’s own practise.

September 1992 British Vogue Cover. Image by Peter Lindbergh

Distilling Her Design Language

Rabun is unabashed in her love for design and it seeps into every aspect of her life. The slither of her home visible on the screen, is dotted with beautiful artwork and artefacts picked up from her travels. She relates that her passion for mid-century furniture has resulted in a considerable collection, some of which is in storage. It is illustrative of a woman for whom aesthetics across all touch points are of profound importance. But for Rabun it is more than surface level prettiness informing her. “When I speak about design language it is about the shape and form of a particular object but it is also the story behind that body of work. For me, my whole design language is about the human experience…each one of my bodies of work is definitely inspired by what I am going through in my life which is probably what everyone else goes through as well,”.In many ways the clues are there in the names of the series of work: Love Distance for instance features two rings with corresponding curves that unite when together but look equally beautiful on their own speak to a long distance relationship. And her first collaboration with Georg Jensen, Offspring, was inspired by the birth of her son: “Offspring is about the unbreakable bond between mother and child and a lot of women go through this…[and] the actual shapes of the pieces are taken from an egg form and eggs are the beginning of life, so it is symbolic of new beginnings. When you have a child your life begins anew and there are challenges but even when it is difficult you’re still in it. It is unbreakable.”

Love Distance Rings in Yellow and White Gold. Image: Courtesy of J Rabun

Love Distance Rings in Sterling Silver. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Offspring Bracelet in Sterling Silver. Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image courtesy of J Rabun

Offspring Bangle in Sterling Silver. Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image courtesy of J Rabun

Offspring Earring in Sterling Silver. Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Her collaboration with Georg Jensen is how Rabun is perhaps best known. Indeed many wonder how an American based in London came on the radar of the Danish heritage house that has been seen as the custodian of Scandinavian design. As with much of Rabun’s story serendipity met with an impressive body of work, she relates “I have a friend who is in fashion and I went out to dinner with her and her partner and they invited Mark Olm who is a Danish photographer and he mentioned that Georg Jensen were looking for designers and he thought my work would be perfect and he happened to know someone there, So he basically spoke to them the next day, gave them my telephone number and we emailed but it wasn’t a thing. I got a telephone call the next day the design director from the jewellery came to see me and then gave me a brief and we were working together.” The whole process from dinner to commencing work took ten days. Astonishing by any measure. But when I gasp in exclamation Rabun adds that she views it as manifestation for both parties as Jensen were looking for someone and she too was seeking to expand her horizons after by that point, nine commercially successful years in business. Most critical to the speed of engagement was her design language which she notes “has an equal dose of Scandinavian and African influences and interestingly there is a lot of Scandinavian jewellery where you can see the designer is very knowledgeable about African jewellery.” Certainly the collaboration which commenced in 1999 with Offspring launched in 2001 and then rebooted for 2018 has been beneficial for both parties. Offspring, is as time of publication, Georg Jensen’s bestselling jewellery collection.

Mercy Bangle in Yellow Gold. Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Mercy Rings. Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Rabun continued to plough the myriad of human experiences and emotions for other series with the heritage house. Cave launched in 2002, a series celebrated amongst jewellery connoisseurs globally who are clamouring for its re=issue, featured concave circular forms occasionally with pave diamonds in a hollowed form. It was a comment at the need to sometimes retreat and find a place for quiet contemplation and reflection. Mercy was launched in 2019 but Rabun notes “I started developing it fifteen years ago and then Georg Jensen asked kindly if they could launch it under their brand. Originally, it was designed for them but we were working on so many projects that it just never happened…but if you think about the time we are living through now it really resonates…we need a lot of mercy. There is a big need for compassion and empathy for others and to walk in somebody else’s shoes for five minutes. It is about not being selfish. It is not that moment now.” To encompass those sentiments, the sculptural forms look different from each vantage point, for both the wearer and those viewing the pieces on the wearer’s body, resulting in an exquisite metaphor for Rabun’s intention. As ever with Rabun, diamonds when utilised are done so discretely, something that some assume given her African-American heritage is unusual as African-Americans and their biggest cultural export, hip=hop are intrinsically linked with the maximalist ‘bling-bling’ aesthetic. She laughs in recognition at what is ultimately a lazy assumption: “My design language is minimalist, but actually there is a lot of African design that in itself is quite minimalist. From art, to furniture, to jewellery. As with me, there is a lot of use of organic forms and that is my link. I draw more from my African heritage, rather than the popular media stereotypes of what black glamour is. I draw more from African jewellery and African art.” It is a reflection of what for many years have been the silos of expectations creative people of colour have oftentimes had to work in. The assumption that one voice, one style, one set of experiences fits all, when in actuality, things are more nuanced and varied.

Cave Ring in Sterling Silver, Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Cave Ring, Yellow Gold and Pave Diamonds. Jacqueline Rabun for Georg Jensen. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

Rabun’s eponymous line has continued to expand on her thesis of jewellery that reflects, documents and harnesses the human experience. A recent special series A Beautiful Life for the PAD Fairs in London and Paris in 2018 included a re-imagined Beautiful ring in aventurine and yellow gold as well as one featuring rutilated quartz crystal and yellow gold. There was also a pendant with a yellow gold vessel form in which a removable aventurine sits, giving the wearer the choice of removing it and holding it in their hand for on-the-go meditative purposes. The choice of gemstones for these pieces was deliberate “my work always has to be honest, I have to like the stone, I have to feel an affinity with it otherwise I cannot work with it”. In the instance of aventurine Rabun was drawn to its historical healing properties which is said to aid the nervous system. Green aventurine in particular is known in the Hindu Chakra system as a heart healer that dissolves negative thoughts for the wearer. Rabun adds “jewellery can give you a sense of security [and] If you walk out of the front door without it you feel like something is missing, I think everyone has had that experience who wears jewellery, and so it is a form of armour and I think if we take that into a spiritual realm it calms you and it gives you comfort.” When we speak of her attraction to rutilated quartz, whose beauty lies in the visible inclusions that sometimes have the appearance of spun gold thread left to form a messy yet captivating pattern, she adds “When you look at these stones you think wow, how did that happen? How did all that imperfection arrive in that stone? I like those imperfections. Because I think that is what we are inside we are not perfect.” It is in many ways a radical proposition, especially as there is a whole sector of jewellery that is dependent on gemstones of almost supernatural perfection that will imbue their wearer with similarly polished, beguiling powers. Rabun is offering wearers to feel comforted and empowered but also vulnerable and open enough to show and share their authentic self rather than a carefully crafted facade. If the gemstones can be honest so can we.

A Beautiful Life Ring, Yellow Gold and Aventurine. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

A Beautiful Life Pendant, Yellow Gold and Rutilated Quartz Crystal. Image: Courtesy of J Rabun

Present Realities and Future Series

Whilst many creatives have been emotionally buffeted by the ‘new normal’ that Covid19 has heralded, Rabun true to form has observed the peculiar needs the season has brought with it and created solutions. “I have been quietly working on some objects for the home and some furniture.. because the home has obviously become so much more important to everyone in the world.” Expanding her canvas from the human body to a room is a natural progression. She has also used the time to reflect on how she wishes to present herself and her work moving forward. She states “I definitely prefer to be known as an artist because whilst of course my speciality is jewellery, I have designed objects furniture and sculpture.” She pauses, before adding “This word designer, I think when you have worked for a long time and you have a specific recognisable look and feel to your work it takes you in to the space of being an artist.” Her oeuvre is ever evolving, but as with many artists, it is doing so on her own terms

A Beautiful Life Ring, Yellow Gold and Rutilated Quartz Crystal. Image Courtesy of J Rabun

A Beautiful Life Pendant, Yellow Gold and Aventurine. Image: Courtesy of J Rabun

.
We close our conversation with a question that Rabun is initially a little hesitant to answer, “you answer it” she challenges me jokingly, and that is how would she describe the Jacqueline Rabun aesthetic. She expands “A lot might say or think that my jewellery is organic and minimal. But it is important for me that those shapes and forms have meaning. I don’t design for design’s sake. I really need to have something to say when I am designing because there is an awful lot of jewellery in the world.” Suffusing jewellery with her own spiritual practises and beliefs is of paramount importance to her, far more than sales figures or public acclaim. “I really hope my work will have some sort of a positive impact on someone’s life, whether they feel empowered or inspired or comforted or cured. Recently, a woman who had cancer wrote to me and said she used one of my pieces as a talisman to get her through her cancer treatment. To me that is why I do what I do.” None of us fully knows how we will be remembered, but for the fortunate few such as Rabun, a body of work that speaks to her truth and resonates in such visceral and powerful way with her clients, provides a validating clue.

The Lustre of Melanie Georgacopoulos

Posted on August 9, 2020 by mazzi

In her 2007 Royal College of Art MA Degree show Melanie Georgacopoulos made modern jewellery history when she reimagined a string of pearls by doing something that at the time was sublimely subversive – slicing them. Reflecting back on it she notes:”It was a very instinctive thing. I wasn’t thinking conceptually what am I doing ? Why am I doing this now and what does it mean?” Her understated comment is typical of the London based Greek native who has been credited with reviving pearls as an option for the contemporary jewellery wearer; a gemstone that had hitherto felt preserved in the visual aspic of portraits of aristocrats and maharajahs, suddenly feels incredibly modern and appealing in her hands. With an eponymous line launched in 2010 and a successful and groundbreaking long term collaboration with heritage pearl house Tasaki now in its eighth year, her contribution to the 21st century jewellery canon seems secure, but like all great living artists, she continues to push boundaries and ask questions of her work, the material she has chosen to work with and the emotional energy and fiscal value we place on pieces made from these treasures from the sea.

Sliced Necklace M/G Tasaki (image courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Craft Mastery and Pearl Discovery

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Georgacopoulos’ love of jewellery has been life-long. Growing up in Greece she reminisces: “I remember a lot of school trips we would always go to museums and in Greece all of the museums are filled with gold jewellery and artefacts.” Home was a creative one, with a French Interior Designer mother encouraging artistic endeavours although jewellery was at her brother’s suggestion: “I was always making things and leaving them around the house. We had a big desktop computer that had fallen apart and I found all those microchips that were inside and I started making smaller pieces with it and my brother said Why don’t you turn it into jewellery at least you can wear it and not leave it lying around. And this is how it started really.”

Formal training began at the Mokume Institute in Athens and was in her words “three years of intense and traditional jewellery technique learning. Not only were we hand-making pieces but we also [learnt about] production so we did casting, diamond setting, granulation, mokume-gane, all these jewellery techniques that we don’t really use these days but it is very important to know..I am very grateful for those years, although I didn’t enjoy all of it at the time” she adds candidly. Sadly, the Mokume Institute has closed, a victim of the Greek Sovereign Debt crisis of 2009 that ravaged the economy. However, the comprehensive training equipped Georgacopoulos for launching her own line in 2010, as unlike many of her contemporaries, she was able to do much of the practical work herself, outsourcing for specific technical purposes only.

Tiles MOP Loop Necklace (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Although now associated with pearls, Georgacopoulos’ gravitation towards working them was gradual. Post Mokume, she took a step away from jewellery design, embarking on a BA in Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art. However, sculpture expanded her curiosity regarding materials providing a wider remit for exploration, “[with] sculpture you are, just working with the material and figuring out what the material gives back or tells you or what you can do with your hands… You don’t start with a design in the same way that one might start in jewellery. You might have a design but you cannot force it, instead you treat the material in a certain way so that it translates into your design.” Her methodology, one that is simultaneously respectful of the materials involved yet at its heart is untethered to established norms and rules allowed her to be boundless in her ideation processes. Alighting on pearls was serendipitous, once enrolled on the Royal College of Art’s prestigious MA in Jewellery Design, one of her tutors noticed that many of her designs featured rounded forms that would lend themselves well to pearls and suggested she explore it. Critically Georgacopoulos adds “sculpture gave me the hands on approach and a certain degree of fearlessness”. And if she had thought too deeply about the act that precipitated the Sliced Collection? “I would have been too scared to cut a pearl, because you’re not supposed to do that with gems in general, you are supposed to enhance their beauty and cutting something in half can feel like you are destroying it.” Or indeed rebirthing it as she did.

Sliced Bracelet, M/G Tasaki (Image courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

From that much talked about Degree Show, Georgacopoulos settled into a dual professional life, one that she admits as a recent graduate in super-competitive London she was fortunate to find herself in: doubling up as a design assistant for Antoine Sandoz where work included designing for companies as varied as Boucheron and Tom Ford and continuing to fulfil orders from her steady stream of private clients. By 2010, a mere three years since graduating she was already stocked in Dover Street Market and met the renowned jewellery curator and agency owner Valery Demure, who immediately suggested they work together. The meeting proved to be a career turning point “I thought okay, I have to decide. I am either going to carry on designing for other people or I am going to jump in, create my brand and focus on pearls….redesigning them and reinventing them.” The three years between graduation and launch allowed Georgacopoulos to refine her initial thesis, dream of new possibilities for the gemstone and critically do market research, “people had just forgotten about pearls. They just didn’t want to touch them and they didn’t know what to do with them,” This perfect storm of early critical acclaim, prestige retail stockists and a unique niche were all she needed to proceed.

Stretched Stud Earrings M/G Tasaki (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Georgacopoulos’ methodology and ethos is reminiscent of the jewellery-artists of old, figures such as Rene Lalique, who she cites as an influence and other interdisciplinary practitioners such as Margaret De Patta, who like her had ambitions of dismantling the elitism found in jewellery design because it limited wider participation. When we speak about nomenclature and whether she perceives herself as an artist, jeweller or something else she expands “It is only in the last year or two that I have allowed myself to see myself [as a jewellery-artist]. I think before I was really keen to prove that I was a good designer” Influences on her own design journey are varied; “Of course all the big houses but also Greek jewellers like Lalaounis, Zolotas and Fanourakis.” She also has high regard for another female pioneer at a heritage jewellery house, who also worked extensively with Mother of Pearl during her tenure at Tiffany and Co., Angela Cummings; “I think she did everything before anyone did anything. And she has not really been credited, I am not quite sure why, but I absolutely adore her work.” Going back further to the first female creative director during the Art Nouveau movement in Paris she references the House of Boivin which was at the forefront of it adding “Yes, I am a fan of Suzanne Belperron like everyone else but at the same time I think I gravitate towards jewellery that is not obviously expensive.”

Tiles MOP Bracelet (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Given the trajectory her own work has taken, it is craft jewellery she returns to for inspiration: “Munich Jewellery Week or Schmuck for example, I find them much more stimulating.” The craft jewellery scene, particularly now, is where one often sees the most experimental work, with creators unburdened by the history, commercial demands and the sales and marketing expectations of large jewellery houses. For Georgacopoulos stimuli comes in many forms, “I tend to be drawn to work where I am not quite sure how it was made… For example David Bielander, his collection called Cardboard…it looked exactly like cardboard but it was actually made with silver and gold…I also like pieces from certain people…like Taffin and Caroline Broadhead who was the head of department at Central Saint Martins for many years. I guess it is more about specific pieces rather than one designer’s repertoire for me.” What consistently appeals to Georgacopoulos and is echoed in her own work is a certain intellectual vigour either in concept or execution and crucially a singular point of view that translates in the pieces.

MOP Cube Stud Earrings (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Democratising Jewellery and Celebrating Materials

Whoever thought that jewellery collections cannot involve an intellectualism or speak to deeper questions would find a riposte in many of Georgacopoulos’ collections for her eponymous brand. For someone working with pearls, hitherto considered one of the most conservative of luxury gemstones there are streaks of bold commentary and rebellion in her work. There is also an outright challenging of aesthetics and notions of value particularly in her work with Mother of Pearl as seen in the collections, Nacre, Tiles, Gemstones and Cube. Explaining the genesis of her ideas she relates: “It started as a very spontaneous response to the jewellery auctions that I was observing at the time, very big gemstones, coloured diamonds, the Blue Moon of Josephine ( a rare blue diamond that fetched $48,468,158 at a Sotheby’s auction in 2015) , I don’t know the other ones names, but all these massive diamonds were fetching a ridiculous amount of money.” The auctions were happening around the same time Georgacopoulos was exploring ways that she could utilise Mother Of Pearl, hitherto a waste product of the pearling industry in her designs. “I feel about Mother Of Pearl the same way I felt about pearls ten years ago, which was what is going on and why was no one doing something interesting?” Unlike pearls, which have always held a high monetary and aesthetic value to collectors, Mother of Pearl has not. She adds laughing “Philip Sajet who is another jeweller says everyone always talks about the pearl but no one talks about the mother…[But] once I realised that I wanted to make a comment about all those crazy jewellery auctions I thought what is the simplest design I can create that people will immediately recognise and identify with, and that was the most common jewellery cuts. Which were the brilliant, the cushion and seven other different cuts and I decided to make a mosaic of all in Mother of Pearl.” The resulting Gemstones collection completed in 2016 challenged conventional thinking. What makes a faceted ‘stone’ covetable and desirable, is it provenance, cost, colour, rarity? And for those concerned with the environment, something that even the most reluctant have to concede some awareness of, isn’t using both the Pearl and Mother of Pearl a responsible and preferred way to consume jewellery? And surely in this age of inclusivity shouldn’t democratisation of participation in jewellery, as Mother of Pearl pieces carry less hefty price-tags, also be up for discussion? Georgacopoulos adds “There should be a cap in my mind on how much things can cost [as when prices get this high] … it almost doesn’t feel like jewellery anymore it becomes something else”

Gemstones MOP Emerald Cufflinks (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Gemstones MOP Cushion Cut Ring (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

With Nacre, designed in 2019, Georgacopoulos has given the clearest indication of where she is heading both as a jeweller and an artist, with this deep meditation on the soul of the pearl resulting in a bold and uncompromising collection that hint at her time at Edinburgh studying Sculpture. “I always joke I am trying to return the pearl to its oyster” she explains of the pieces that see pearls set in correspondingly coloured Mother of Pearl seemingly disappearing back into their shell. The collection represents Georgacopoulos granting herself the permission to surrender fully to where her artistry will take her: “I accept what the piece comes out as without putting restrictions; whether they are monetary restrictions, or thinking Oh, who is going to wear this? Or it needs to be a bit smaller or it needs to do this or it needs to do that. The Nacre pieces…can stand as small sculptures in a space. So it is that line between jewellery looking like jewellery, having jewellery elements but also being an object. And I think that is why it ends up being more expensive because one needs for example a thicker piece of gold as you need that balance for the piece.” The collection alongside Cube (designed in 2018) which also features a pearl juxtaposed with a cube of Mother Of Pearl have not only opened discourses around a material which was hitherto disregarded but also allowed Georgacopoulos to play more with proportions and task herself with a new challenge. “What people consider a beautiful and valuable pearl is usually perfectly round, no blemishes, perfect lustre to the point that it looks fake especially if it is a really large one . I thought it was a good idea to reunite the pearl to the oyster to show that this is actually quite amazing even if it is a cultured pearl, as it is still a little animal creating this.” In her able hands she fashions that reality into adornments that are evocative of this particular truth.

Nacre Necklace (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Nacre Double Ring (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

This is not to say that Georgacopoulos is satisfied with her pieces being worn by habitués of PAD Fair, Frieze Art Fair and the Front Row at major global fashion weeks, although her work has an obvious appeal to people working in the creative industries and those who already have strong aesthetic sensibilities. She expands “I want to keep the jewellery open enough design wise that it appeals to a wider range of women and not just have one specific art or design lady who earns a lot of money and has eclectic taste as my client. I think women, people, are more diverse.” Furthermore, Georgacopoulos is determined to take pearl jewellery out of the for-special-occasions-only silo adding “I intentionally want to have very wearable everyday pieces that people can buy without having to save up money for them ” To this end the Essence collection designed in 2014 and aforementioned Cube fit the rubric as they have an informal feel without compromising on Georgacopoulos’ design language. She adds “I don’t want to lose that connection with people who like the pieces I design but are not able to spend five figures on them”

Essence Rings, (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Co-Creating with an Innovative Heritage Brand

Recounting how her long-term collaboration with Japanese pearl heritage house Tasaki came into being, the predestined qualities of the story shine through. “The director of Tasaki was in London and saw my pieces in Dover Street Market…And I think they tried to locate me through my agent and I got an email saying that they wanted to invite me to Japan to meet with them over a week but they didn’t really say what it was about.” What ensued was a creative courtship, with Georgacopoulos recalling “They took me to Nagasaki to their pearl farm where I opened some oysters, I found some pearls inside and then they took me to Kobe where their production facility is and I was completely blown away. I remember thinking I am in Japan, I am talking to a Japanese pearl jewellery company, they are interested in my work, how crazy is this? I am basically a Greek girl, designing pearl jewellery and I have a giant of the pearl industry contacting me.” What the comprehensive tour indicated, was that the team at Tasaki had identified the talent that would assist them in creating collections that clearly positioned them as the avant-garde alternative to their main competitor Mikimoto. Furthermore, they were willing, in spite of their history as an established heritage house, to humbly court her until she acquiesced. For her part, Georgacopoulos, on signing her contract in 2012 handed her breakthrough degree collections: Sliced, Drilled and Arlequin to be extended and produced under the new marque they created for the collaboration M/G Tasaki, in 2013.

Drilled Earrings M/G Tasaki (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Arlequin Bangle, M/G Tasaki (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Georgacopoulos is remarkably calm about what many might perceive as giving away her trademark work, she adds: “I was thinking, well, through my agent, and through me wholesaling I can probably sell five or ten of these [pieces] , but Tasaki can sell hundreds of these. Which means that for hundreds of customers, maybe thousands over time, they will have embraced something that is to a certain extent quite radical.” Additionally, from a creative perspective “it forced me to say okay, I have done this but now I move on. I want to test myself, challenge myself. I don’t want to repeat, just because it works. I don’t want to do this for the x amount of years I am going to work as a jeweller.”

Wedge Ring M/G Tasaki (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Subsequent collections have followed the same commercial success and the collaboration has availed Georgacopoulos with the opportunity to have two parallel careers in the same industry. Tasaki provides production and development facilities that a smaller brand can only dream of, whilst Georgacopoulos continues expanding on her mandate of reimagining pearl jewellery, but keeping a keen eye on commercial considerations, such as using diamonds and other gemstones. Collections of note have included to name a few Segment (2016), Grain and Woven (2018)

Segment Ring M/G Tasaki (Image courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

For a company steeped in history she reports that neither her gender or her not being Japanese have impeded her progress or created logjams.“It is by far the best professional experience I have had in my life. Not because it has been easy but because it has been very straightforward from the beginning. They chose me because they liked my jewellery voice, so they never imposed anything. Whenever I am supposed to do a new collection…I receive a plan with certain price points and a list of what has sold well in the past. But they never give me any directions in terms of design, so I come up with the design directions, I send a huge amount of drawings and they tell me okay we feel this is right for us this season and we will develop that.” It speaks positive volumes of Tasaki’s corporate culture and in many ways future-proofs them for the 21st century. With call-out and cancel culture catching many a jewellery and fashion behemoth in the crosshairs, the arrangement between Georgacopoulos and Tasaki is one where mutual respect is forefront, exploitation and discrimination is entirely absent and she is availed the technical support and expertise to deliver products that customers will love. It is a collaboration template that many will no doubt seek to emulate as increasingly discerning customers seek out jewellery that is both beautiful and made by brands that share their values.

Woven Necklace M/G Tasaki (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Authenticity and the future of Jewellery

“I am very excited to see students working with pearls.” Georgacopolous says. As a Visiting Lecturer in the BA Jewellery Design course at Central Saint Martin’s, she works principally with final year students. She is also quick to encourage them to be as audacious as she was adding “We should always try to imagine something different. There is no point in repeating the past… fine, it is not easy for anyone but what will make you stand out ultimately is your individual expression.” Authenticity, has become something of a buzzword in the worlds of jewellery and fashion with brands large and small, devising multifarious plans to engage and attract customers in an ever crowded marketplace. By teaching students to chart their own course early, Georgacopoulos hopes to provide them with a blueprint for a successful existence that stretches beyond the jewellery bench. And generous to a fault, she uses her own Instagram handle as a means of amplification, posting graduate and recent graduates’ work to followers.

Grain Double Ring M/G Tasaki (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

We close our conversation considering the luxury space in light of the Covid19 pandemic, which in addition to claiming lives, has laid waste to businesses globally. What does she feel this time means for the future of luxury and jewellery in particular? Georgacopoulos’ response is emphatic. “Whether it is fashion, jewellery, or objects , I really hope we are going to embrace more craftsmanship, handmade things and not just buying something that is made five thousand times and paying a premium because it has a nice big logo on. I just cannot identify with that for my own life.” `Conscious consumption aside, lockdown has also been a season where Georgacopoulos has not only embraced the juggle of parenting, homeschooling and designing, but also questioned the way jewellery is currently marketed and the myth-making that goes hand in hand with it. She notes “I feel this moment is generally translating into people showing a bit more of themselves and not the image they think they have to project.” Discussing her forthcoming campaign imagery she expands “I really don’t want the beautiful woman with the perfect nails looking absolutely stunning and wearing matching jewellery pieces which is the typical stereotype…. I think as women we are relaxing a little bit more [in regard to] how we show ourselves and this idea of perfection that essentially men have imposed on us.” Pearls as the ornamental armour for the woman who is in control of her own destiny, rather than a debutante or grand dame whose identity is contingent on her provenance or who she married? It doesn’t get more modern than that.

Nacre Bangle, (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Georgacopoulos’ trajectory is a masterclass in the power of focus and determined application. Each creative chapter on her journey so far seamlessly feeds into the next: from childhood experimental maker to student silversmith, sculptor, jewellery designer and now jewellery artist. Whilst her ascent may appear speedy, having courage in her convictions has also played its part. Few would dare to present a degree show with such a fundamental rule broken or indeed continue to challenge pre=conceived notions in high jewellery. Her design explorations and collaborations also indicate a creator who although fortunate to find her niche early, has still remained open to widening its locus and the modus operandi of execution, as seen in her work for her eponymous brand, M/G Tasaki and special commissions, exhibitions and shows such as ‘Le Cabinet de Curiosites de Thomas Erber,’ held in Paris in 2015. Her humility in light of her successes is indicative of a creator who still believes there is much more to explore as hubris is normally borne out of complacency which Georgacopoulos is the very opposite of. Before we part company she leaves me pondering a profound statement that incapsulates the emotional connection people form with their jewellery and by extension the jewellery creatives they admire: “People buy energy…You buy the energy of a piece, the energy that you take from it, the energy that it gives you, the energy that you feel when you wear it or when you own it.” Groundbreaking designs aside it is her enduring optimism and candour that guides her work: “I try to be as honest as I can and I like the idea of opening things up instead of saying ah, this is a secret and exclusive.” In this modern age of inclusiveness, collaboration and widening the remit of participation, her career feels built to last.

Thomas Erber Rectangle Necklace (Image Courtesy of Melanie Georgacopoulos)

Exploring Melanie Eddy’s Many Facets

Posted on July 9, 2020 by mazzi

“Any maker wants their work to speak first” says Melanie Eddy, but when the work ranges from jeweller, to academic, to international development expert and now educational change agent, it doesn’t just speak, it shouts from the rooftops. Amongst the jewellery cognoscenti Eddy is a noted voice: her atelier situated in the heart of Clerkenwell, London’s traditional jewellery district is a destination for collectors of her arresting pieces in gold and silver that are informed by her love of architecture and geometry. As a lecturer on the MA Ceramics, Furniture and Jewellery programme at the world renowned Central Saint Martin’s, she is stewarding the next generation of creative visionaries. Furthermore, her work in the development sector has seen her spearhead programmes that use jewellery as a socio-economic catalyst and cultural anchor in post-conflict territories. A Director for the Association for Contemporary Jewellery, Eddy is to some extent part of the jewellery establishment, although her Bermudan-New Zealander heritage have oftentimes made her the only person of colour with a seat at the proverbial table and brought with it attendant challenges. Our wide ranging conversation, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder and the resulting global protests against racism and white supremacy, inevitably turns to the lack of diversity in the jewellery world and debates around inclusivity, something that Eddy is seamlessly addressing with a practical and professional approach.

Melanie Eddy image: Nicola Muirhead — Melanie Eddy in her studio. Image by Nicola Muirhead

Tackling Diversity, Challenging Perceptions
“I have been teaching for six years at Central Saint Martins…and since I have been on the course I have not seen a jeweller come on the course who is of black heritage.” Eddy relates, in soft spoken tones that convey razor sharp analyses and somewhat uncomfortable truths, sweetened by their delicate delivery. Considering the situation from the perspective of potential students she notes “if you don’t see many exemplars from your community…people don’t visualise themselves in that space because it is removed from their reality.” Rather than merely lament the situation, Eddy has put her relationships within the industry to powerful effect. As a co=founder of the Jewellery Futures Fund, Eddy together with Rachel Garrahan, Jewellery and Watch Director of British Vogue and Annabel Davidson, Vanity Fair’s On Jewellery editor are responding to the issues head-on: from providing bursaries for black students, to paid internships for graduates across the jewellery sector and grants for emerging designers and makers of colour. It is an audacious plan of action that is a continuum of conversations she has initiated throughout her career, but which came to a head in recent weeks. “When all of this stuff was coming out people were like oh my God, this is horrible, what can we do? And I kind of was like well, actually..” She says wryly laughing at the memory: “The jewellery industry is so frigging white….There are some of us here and there needs to be more of us.” Eddy recognises her luck in being able to complete her studies via a combination of grants, bursaries and assistance from her family and is passionate that the fund expands the participation pool so that the jewellery industry truly evolves. Significantly, the fund takes the tripartite approach of education, work experience and investing in black students and thus has the potential to address the issue in a holistic and measurable manner long after the marches hashtags and comment pieces have ceased flooding our collective feeds and timelines.

Geometric Gold Rings: Image: Courtesy of Melanie Eddy

Eddy’s love affair with jewellery is lifelong; “my connection to jewellery definitely came from my Mum and my grandmother because they were very stylish and they had jewellery boxes full of all kinds of treasures” It was not long before Eddy became something of an autodidact: “I was reading about gems in the school library and stuff like that and then I made a bit of jewellery at high school but with bits of glass as I didn’t have gems” However, her route into the industry wasn’t linear, initially studying for a joint honours in English and International and Comparative Studies at the University of Western Ontario, Huron University College, as in her words “I had the grades” rather than opting for the more precarious path of full-time creative. Yet, she found her way back to jewellery although not without experiencing first hand numerous micro-aggressions as a woman of colour: “I applied to the Royal College of Art and I didn’t get accepted but not only did I not get accepted in my interview I was talked to and treated in not a very nice way to the extent that another tutor apologised and helped me apply to other institutions…I was really ripped to shreds at the interview and it really impacted me.” Neither was this an isolated incident, Eddy adds: “As the years passed jewellery [making] had started to become smaller and my other work [in the industry] became bigger because I found it easier in terms of being heard…I didn’t feel the same kind of reception in the jewellery sector. I have been turned down for exhibitions, I have been turned down for things that I have applied for and people looking at my stuff would be like how is that possible?” But whilst she leaves the question open, it is clear that the unconscious bias and overt prejudice had resulted in many decision makers within the industry either unwilling or lacking in imagination to posit her among the vanguard of jewellery designers paving the way in the early 21st century.

Topaz Engagement Ring and Wedding Band. Image: Courtesy of Melanie Eddy

For Eddy, a clear design language has always been at the heart of her practice and has resulted in pieces that are immediately recognisable as her own. She elaborates: “For me it was really important to keep the message clear in my jewellery but it was also a contested space..people would say you are not making work about your experience or it doesn’t look like the kind of work they would expect from a black person or one from the Caribbean.” Further upending external expectations are her architectural forms and references, which for the lazy reviewer belonged to a male practitioner: “In terms of architecture two elements resonate for me: sacred architecture of all faiths and doctrines and the sparseness of Tadao Ando’s designs and how deliberate he was in terms of interaction and creating these very experiential spaces” In addition to Ando, she cites Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid as having influenced her work, as well as the avant-garde artist and pioneer of the Suprematist movement Kazimir Malevich. Indeed her jewellery, often includes geometric shapes and gemstones cut and set in such a way that they are evocative of abstract art. When worn, the pieces create new silhouettes on the wearer’s body, reminiscent of the way a new building transforms both the existing landscape it is situated in and people’s relationship to it. For those seeking pieces with intellectual depth of meaning Eddy’s work is consistent in its messaging and intriguing in equal measure. Not to say this has not gone without resistance or comment: “Why should I have to adapt to perceptions of blackness?” She rightly asks. It is an important question, inclusion is only one part of the diversity equation, of equal import are expectations and narrow suppositions. Tribal references, bright colours and heavy ornamentation should not become the only aesthetic and design silo for the female jeweller of colour to operate from.

Blue Topaz and Palladium Ring. Image: Courtesy of Melanie Eddy

Eddy is emphatic in recognising the pioneer women and black jewellers who are important standard bearers and touchstones for herself and future generations: “Top of the list has to be Jacqueline Rabun. I spoke to her for the first time yesterday and I was starstruck and surprised that I was even able to have a proper chat with her as I was grinning so hard.” she says of the African-American designer who in addition to her own private atelier has spearheaded a commercial and creative revival at heritage Danish jewellery house Georg Jensen. “Suzanne Belperron, a designer from back in the day [and] of course Elsa Perretti for Tiffany are also big inspirations.” Of arguably the first great black designer of the contemporary era she notes: “I didn’t know much about Art Smith until much later.” That Smith still remains relatively unknown is something Eddy is seeking to rectify via the lens of education and increased visibility for designers of colour: “It is important for us to come to the fore because it means younger people will feel validated and that the space is for them.”

Jewellery as a Catalyst for Change

It is perhaps in Eddy’s roles in the third sector that has seen her work overtly cross over into the political realm, and curiously take her back to her first discipline of international development: “All of the projects that I have been involved in…have had a collaborative nature to them, a local component and the agency is there from the country side as supposed to a drop-in kind of situation because I feel uncomfortable {with that] and have actually interrogated that process.” Consultancies have taken her extensively across Central and South Asia where she sought means for jewellery makers, miners and artisans to create further value. She expands: “looking at real solutions to income generation in countries ravaged by war, debating the course of sustainable business practices for the creative sector, how we continue to provide opportunities to all spectrums of society to engage in that process for keeping art and design colleges diverse culturally and economically….that is when I see the value of my voice at those tables.” For countries such as Afghanistan with rich mineral deposits but limited capacity building mechanisms and where Eddy worked at Turquoise Mountain’s Institute for Afghan Arts and Architecture, practitioners who were conversant in the political and economic challenges, but committed to creating scenarios that glean the greatest good were a welcome boon, she notes: “Turquoise Mountain was different …they don’t operate that standard model..they wind things up and it becomes run by nationals which is the best way.”

Aquamarine and Gold Ring: Image Courtesy of Melanie Eddy — Aquamarine and Gold Engagement Ring and Wedding Band: Image Courtesy of Melanie Eddy

However, even in these fora, western-centric thinking often proved problematic. “These cultures have a history of excellence and expertise we were just facilitating growth on existing legacies and craftsmanship… [For instance} they have a history of gold craftsmanship in parts of East and West Africa.. In Afghanistan there is a history of gem cutting…what is sometimes frustrating about some of these projects is not acknowledging what is happening in the communities. The [projects] that are done really well acknowledge the history, that it is not about bringing European techniques” She is equally scathing about models that see global marketshare increasing as the only true measure of success: “It is as if the only viable consumer is the international consumer, the western global consumer which is ridiculous. If you look at the demographics in regard to what is happening with the growing middle and higher economic classes in Africa for instance, the market is there. The market is not abroad. Within 40 or 50 years people will wake up to this reality but right now they are still in a bit of a daze…Any strategy has to be cognisant of fostering a community, fostering growth and fostering engagement with local markets and growing local markets.” Perhaps black jewellery designers be they on the continent or in the diaspora would do well to explore emerging economies and territories rather than fix their gaze firmly on the west? What is most significant is how this body of work clearly illustrates how jewellery, an item deemed as a luxury and to some a frippery can be at the forefront of enabling economic prosperity, political stability and cultural exchange.

Looking to the future of jewellery, particularly via the lens of black jewellery designers, Eddy is optimistic even though creating jewellery collections, campaigning for better terms of engagement within the industry, teaching her students and consulting in the development sector has resulted in fatigue and occasional disillusionment “ it is lonely and it is isolating” she says and it is in instances such as this that old friends such as the writer Afua Hirsch come into play: “she is really super busy but we will still connect and talk occasionally and she has given me the fortitude to stay the course.” Because Eddy’s work goes far beyond herself and personal and professional plaudits. It is about correcting historical injustices where opportunities to participate and recognition of the quality of work produced by black jewellery designers were limited at best and obstructed and ignored at worst. It is about expanding the locus of taste to incorporate aesthetic values from other parts of the world and halt the western gaze that sees difference as intrinsically inferior. It is about those working in the industry, especially in countries with considerable mineral wealth finally seeing equitable working conditions and pay. And finally it is about using her considerable talent as a designer and maker to create pieces that speak to her clients and transform their mood, ensembles and life from the moment they wear them. With her prodigious talent, crystal clear values and tenacious spirit, the best from her for her collectors, students and the industry is yet to come.

Inside The World of Kenneth Ize

Posted on January 3, 2019 by mazzi

Tucked away on a side street in Yaba, a historic part of Lagos that is also home to the city’s art school, is Kenneth Ize’s studio. It makes sense entirely that the man attributed of single-handedly spearheading Nigerian fashion’s revived love affair with woven cloth, contemporising it and designing collections of covetable pieces worn by the global fashion cognoscenti and a smattering of celebrities should choose this corner of the mainland for his base. He elaborates: “I picked here because I like colonial houses , I like old buildings and architecture and I just really wanted to be in a space where my staff and I could be here together.” For a designer who is known for the kaleidoscopic nature of his fabric choices and juxtapositions the two storied light filled, white walled and monochrome terrazzo floored house offers a striking and visually calming counterpoint to the pieces he creates. The overall vibe is of a conscientious creative commune, his aforementioned staff, two weavers and an assistant continue to diligently work in the adjacent room, samples are neatly arranged in a corner, and only his dog seems to be allowed to rush in and out as he pleases interrupting us every so often from his base camp of the veranda. Away from the hubbub, the plaudits the clients who keep returning to Alara for another Kenneth Ize fix, he has created the optimum cocoon for him to continue to live and work.

An Education in Aesthetics that’s find its way home

As with many designers Ize’s path has the aura of predestination. Regarding being drawn to fashion design he explains: I would say it was something I believed I could do best, it is something I saw around me [and] I customised my own clothes.” Attention to detail was inspired by his father: “I grew up seeing my dad wearing suits and the alignment was perfect. Even his singlet he would make sure, like, it was proper like flat…He would tell me there are some pants that you wear that it has to be so slick, like your bum has to be so smooth, you can’t have the pant line so my dad was rocking g strings to not have a pant line. I mean that guy, I don’t know what planet he was from…. But thinking now it is beautiful because it is my Dad who taught me mostly how to dress.” Upending the assumption that most African parents are reluctant for their child to embark in a career in the creative industries, much less fashion, he expands: “My parents are very nostalgic but cool… I studied psychology for a year and I never went to class [but] when I called my Mum and I am like Mum I think I know what I want to do I want to be a fashion designer, she was like go for it , this is what you should be doing.“

Of course, this was not misplaced optimism on the part of Ize’s parents; who had left Nigeria and settled in Austria as a family. He won a place at the prestigious Institute of Design, University of Applied Arts, Vienna where he did his BA under the instruction of Bernard Willhelm and his MA under the tutelage of the legendary Hussein Chalayan. Immersing himself in a demanding programme that was interdisciplinary in its approach and allowed him to explore the semiotics and theory of fashion as much as construction remains evident in his approach, which unlike many who are self-taught possesses an intellectualism and rigour that is every bit as important as the rack appeal of the finished pieces. “I just started playing with yarns during my thesis. I was researching, and I kept asking around where could I get weavers…one of my cousins knew a lady that made fabric and that wove here [in Lagos] so she took me there we did a sample and it was so experimental…I was saying everything I wanted and we sat outside and started doing it. And I was like wait, I could actually just expand this thing into something.” For many the finished fabric is aso’oke, a traditional woven fabric technique that is native to the Yoruba of South Western Nigeria but Ize sees his iteration of being an expansion on the traditional fabric. “It took me about two years… I feel like the experimentation we have done with this fabric has now shifted it from being aso’oke to being a woven cloth that should be celebrated everywhere in the world as we have moved this technique to a different level” In experimentation Ize has created a fabric that is 60% silk, 30% rayon and 10% cotton, allowing for more malleability and a glossy sheen in the finish. But this is not to say that he has abandoned the craft aspect in the process as he notes: “We hand weave here, a two-yard scarf for instance to prepare and design the pattern takes about a day and then to weave the actual fabric it takes about seven hours. It’s very labour intensive and the lady I started working with, she’s getting older, but I am so happy because one of her nieces is really loving this and has gotten into it now. I also have a team in Ilorin so we make the samples here and the team in Ilorin produces to a very large scale.” The organic nature of the process and the communal nature of the team behind it results in a more personal piece of luxury. In the age of the ‘drop’ and an insatiable client base that designers are pressured to feed at all times and costs, Ize’s process places skills, sustainability and perhaps most important of all, humanity at the centre.

Asked about his design language Ize is emphatic when he states: “For me the aesthetic is very pragmatic. It’s real definitely, and that is the kind of person I am designing for, because it is all comfortable clothes, just put it on and off you go. Also, the brand is very genuine and genuine aligns with one being very pragmatic.” Certainly, much of what he has offered on the runway has been classic in cut, from single breasted jackets to city shorts, trousers and jumbo scarves that can be draped and shaped in a myriad of ways. With the colours and textures being so audacious restraint is indicated in the silhouette. It also reveals commercial savvy; colour and print can often frighten the average shopper but made in an easy to wear shape the leap of consideration to purchase becomes easier. He also sees his brand as acting as conduit for others to plug into what is happening in Nigeria culturally and having an ambassadorial role in changing negative perceptions: “I am not just making these clothes for myself, I am making them for every African person. I want people to go Google oh yes, Nigeria, Lagos because they have seen the clothes and it makes them so fascinated.” In a world where cultural signifiers hold far greater currency than policy statements or government pronouncements, Ize’s thesis of Africa charting a positive course through its creative industries is far from naïve.

Muses, Supporters and the Fashion Eco-System

For a designer working in the 21^st century there is something delightfully old-school in Ize’s methodology. Similar to the likes of Yves Saint Laurent with Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux or Karl Lagerfeld with Ines De La Frassange and a host of fabled beauties and it-girls since, Ize works closely with a muse. In his case the muse is Baingor Joiner, or as he is known more simply Bai, a creative consultant and photographer and part of the Lagos Cool Set. Ize is effusive in his praise for Bai: “Oh my God, I had a crush on Bai, the first time I met him my fantasies were on Bai, I just wanted to dress Bai…. I saw Bai and it was about clothes, it was about a design and about the runway which is interesting because runway is one thing that makes my collections really cohesive because even before a collection is made I have seen it, I have had the vision. Bai helps me narrate my vision.” It also helps that Bai by virtue of his activities as a DJ, model, photographer and fixture in Lagos’ creative nexus is in touch with many of the creative and cultural outlets that Ize infuses into his work and reframes via clothing. Ize adds: “We have conversations on design. He tells me how he feels about clothes because he also really understands where my mind is.” When asked how long he sees their working relationship lasting, Ize shakes his head at the thought of having a revolving door of muses: “I would love to use Bai in the next 20 years if he is not too busy for me…and even it gets that way Bai is an open spirit and I am too, we just really connect together and he knows how to say yes and never say no to me.”

The familial energy extends to clients and supporters many whom are also cultural ambassadors in their own right: “I gain support from past relationships I have with people like Reni Folawiyo…friends like Faridah Folawiyo, Jomi Marcus-Bello from Waffles n Cream, Tokini Peterside of Art X and I love Nduka from This Day too.” Reni Folawiyo, owner of Alara is not only an early stockist, she has also invested significantly in the Oji Showroom in Paris (which with assistance from the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) saw Kenneth Ize and other menswear brands showcase their work) furthermore, Faridah Folawiyo a fine art consultant is a close friend and confidante. By having such a close network of friends and a clear sense of purpose Ize has been able to navigate challenging episodes most recently the rumour mill that went into overdrive when he didn’t show at either Lagos Fashion Week or GTB Fashion Weekend this year. He shares candidly: “My mind runs very fast…I am going through a serious depression right now… I had this collection ready before because I follow the international fashion calendar, but these weren’t the spaces for me to show anymore in a runway that I can’t be able to control or organise…I want to be able to be given the time and to be able to express my feelings and my emotions on the journey of making these clothes.” Instead he spent a month at a residency in New Orleans arranged by The Assemble a London based architectural and design collective and funded by two New Orleans based reclusive philanthropists who want to invest in the city’s creative possibilities. Ize expands on what the students should hope to experience: “I am really excited to be teaching how to make things more cohesive. I also have a project that I am going to give them… I am going to use the source of what I learnt from my university days because I feel like I have learnt so much from my uni and I am excited because it is a way of me remembering myself and refreshing my spirit and my energy because I really wanted to leave Lagos because I need a break not to see things that I see every day.”

He also provides a broadside on the efficacy and relevance of the spate of fashion weeks, shows and events saturating the Nigerian calendar when he adds: “I don’t think I have to lash anybody, but I do think maybe we just really have to go back to bed, sleep a bit and wake up again and think things through. I think fashion weeks here, there are too many already….I don’t know why this is like this because the fashion industry in Nigeria is just 1% , the 1% we all know each other…Everything I make and every one of my decisions in my life has to be very relevant. So if it is hurting me there is no point in showing. Then I also thought that why do I have to keep running around making this or making that to show? To show for who? Who am I really showing this for if my client isn’t really there? I mean I have done shows over four years under Lagos Fashion Week and I don’t think I have gotten a buyer from there one time.” It is an assessment that whilst not often spoken about overtly, for fear of offending industry leaders, gate-keepers and business leaders is whispered quietly by many designers regarding the different fashion weeks on the Lagos fashion calendar be it LFW or GTB. From the relative absence of buyers vis a vis journalists, influencers and bloggers to the flying in of big names in the international fashion scene that do not offer any ongoing engagement with the local industry beyond excitable social media posts during their brief visits and prestige by association for those who have hosted them. Whilst the flurry of articles and write ups that appear in the international press hailing the Lagos fashion scene might be deemed great for profile building, especially for the brands that get a mention, questions still remain as to why they do not necessarily translate into orders and sales. However, it is a nascent industry, and this too is something Ize concedes noting : “It’s a very tricky one, they, the organisers, are doing what they think they can do but it is self-taught. I don’t see the fashion shows here to be a business because at the end of the day that designer that has shown for one hundred years or whatever is still a bespoke designer. Ready to wear culture is not really known here…. Where are those clothes going to after the shows? So okay maybe [they are] going to go to Zinkata, Temple Muse, Alara but what else again?” By raising these questions and choosing to pause from the domestic fashion merry-go-round Ize is displaying a bravery that some might seem deem reckless, but conversely, if one does not critique or question, how does one grow?

He is equally passionate about the state of the Nigerian fashion industry and the paucity of opportunities available whether one is starting out in the business or more established. He notes: “We’re getting the press but we’re not making the money here. There are loads of international designers I won’t mention names, but you could show me their collections and I can show you how African designers or our aesthetics have been referenced.” And whilst the occasional Social Media ‘name and shame’ might cause a flurry of activity on threads it does not translate into revenue as he puts it more succinctly: “I mean the fashion industry is growing here but I don’t think it is making money. Because for example I do not know any Nigerian fashion designer that is selling in Dover Street Market.” He is equally scathing of the Pop-Up model which has seen a number of Nigerian designers be stocked albeit temporarily in prestigious stores overseas as he adds chuckling: “They want to pop you up honey but that’s just it. A pop means they don’t trust you. They are low-key trying to tell you that ‘oh let’s give you a pop up you know and then be happy and it’s going to be good’. But if someone offered me a pop up I would say no, because I am not willing to make 50 jackets for a pop up as what is really the assurance of me selling? If you really trust in someone’s brand you would actually want to have it in that store and buy the collection outright that’s my belief.” Training is an ongoing issue, something Ize with the benefit of his education feels needs to be urgently addressed: “The lack of education here in our system is a problem. The fact we don’t have a fashion school that would teach students how to grow an aesthetic. We need a strong fashion school here. it’s time.” He also questions the intent of the international spotlight so firmly on Africa currently when he adds .”They are consuming (our creativity) and we are not making the money…We think we are exposing these African brands but we are really not , we are only exposing the continent for people to take from.” And whilst his upbringing makes Ize very much an internationalist his warning to Nigeria and in the greater scheme Africa as a whole of needing to chart its own destiny rather than assume an equal playing field will be created on the global fashion landscape is pertinent.

Fame, Fandom and Future Plans

For someone who has seen his client list grow beyond Nigeria to include the likes of Donald Glover, Anum Bashir and most recently Beyoncé, Ize is decidedly muted about the implications for his brand. “You know it’s a sustainable brand and I don’t think about popularity, not at all. Trust me I didn’t know who Childish Gambino was. I don’t feel like I know five lyrics from Beyoncé’s songs… I know people would assume he would know this he would know that, but I just don’t…I am thinking about how can I better myself and better my environment? The way it works in my head is I care more about my staff than chasing celebrities to wear my clothes. I am not a crowd chaser. I am just about being natural. I am also very aware of how destructive this world is already so all I am[focusing on is how can I as an individual person make a change in the world or add to this world so that it can be better.” It is for this reason that Ize doesn’t engage in sending pieces out to celebrities speculatively or go into PR overdrive during awards season. Instead, stylists approach his team and orders are taken from there, just as with any other client. A contrarian approach but it allows for greater freedom in the long run as he is not enslaved to insta-popularity or the foibles of a few famous clients.

For female fans who have had to content themselves with slipping into menswear pieces of Kenneth Ize’s, if they are slender of hip enough to do so, this year brings the arrival of a full womenswear collection. “I have been working on this collection for the past four months I am still not done it’s a lot of work I have never made women’s wear before…, I want to know the body of a woman because I am making womenswear.” He gestures to me and adds: “I want to know your story as a woman I want to know everything…I want to know about your menstruation how you move how you feel everything. This is my headspace right now. I am so excited by this womenswear because my energy is so into it and I love it so much I am telling you it is going to be amazing.” His effervescence is infectious and with his meticulous approach to design conception female fans will no doubt flock for more. Womenswear is just one part of a broader expansion that will include lifestyle objects in due course. As Ize notes: “Because my brand is luxury there is a goal and there is a determination. My determination, I am going to be very honest here, is to be the brand that is from Africa that is on everyone’s radar globally because I am sick and tired of seeing negative things about Africa.”

Of his peers within the industry, there are only a few he admires: “I like Kelechi Odu and Maki Oh and I also like Waffles n Cream and it’s very affordable and it’s one of the only brands that I feel I own a lot of pieces from, yes Waffles n Cream totally. I would say those are the three brands.” Expanding to brands based outside of Africa, once more it is the interdisciplinary visionaries that capture his imagination the most when he adds: “You know in as much as I get that I sound a bit shady but I don’t feel like I know or love many brands even international brands….I love Chanel , because I have these conversations with a lot of people and they are like oh, they do the same thing and I am like no, the beautiful thing and the reason why I connect so much with Chanel is that every time you see his shows they are like fucking epic. This guy Karl, he thinks about everything with his shows. Sometimes I will just go on YouTube and be like let me just watch a Chanel show… I also like Christopher Lemaire and Paco Rabanne… it’s its own aesthetic, it is alternative, it’s a different sexy I can’t even explain it.” By not being over engrossed with what others are doing Ize’s career has to date not suffered from the critique of being derivative or homage heavy and in that lies its greatest strength.

It is clear that Ize has a long-term strategy for his brand and has assembled a team that can assist him in his journey, but he notes that although he is very much part of the renaissance that the creative arts are enjoying in Nigeria, challenges remain to him living a fully authentic life. Outside of the world of fashion, one where sexual orientation and identifying as non-binary barely raises a robed shoulder, society remains obstinately conservative: “I feel like my sexuality is something that will not allow me to be here for a very long time which is very sad… There are a lot of gay people here but at the same time if you have lived somewhere like Europe, lived all your life having this freedom and then someone is taking it away from you, someone you don’t even see, I am like why? The other day I was out with like twenty-one gay men at Nok and we were at a table and it was like the most beautiful thing for me in Lagos. It was so nice.” It is a poignant conclusion to my time with Ize as one is left with the notion of what does it take to have a truly dynamic fashion industry here in Nigeria? There is talent aplenty and a youth led population that is the breeding ground of innovation globally. Yes, structural challenges remain; capacity building is high up on the to-do and must-do list. But will we lose our greatest talents to other locales because we do not have a truly inclusive society? It would be a tragedy if this was the case. But for now we celebrate the places and spaces such as fashion where talent, beauty, creativity and possessing the ability to distil dreams into apparel still have the power to vanquish, and love and doing the work is enough.

GTB Fashion Weekend 2018 Day Two Review

Posted on November 30, 2018 by mazzi

“People of colour are determining culture today.” Dapper Dan declared at GTB Fashion Weekend, in a Masterclass full of insightful and surprising vignettes from his four decades plus career in fashion. Indeed, one could expand his thesis and argue that Nigeria, as the world’s most populous black nation has the potential to dictate how culture is not only steered but also in which direction. Day two definitely shared some of that intentional approach with a masterclass roster that included footwear designer Nicholas Kirkwood and fashion editor and style icon Julia Sarr-Jamois and grand fromage names both on the catwalk and on the front row. It hinted at an agenda that was one-part shock and awe the audience with a fashion immersion session like no other and another part create a celebratory and euphoric atmosphere that reflected the enthusiasm and love most gathered had for fashion For the most part it worked.

Opening the night with Lanre Da Silva Ajayi or LDA as she is affectionately known, whose presence guaranteed that the frow was a veritable who’s who of Nigeria high society. If you are a lady who has graduated from turning right in an aeroplane and maybe left the civilian world of moving around in commercial craft altogether, it is more than likely you will be a loyal and regular customer and possibly on first name terms too with Lanre. Like a Giambattista Valli Haute Couture customer, the LDA woman isn’t really wearing pieces such as this to do the school run or get the green light on her proposals from the board. This is high-octane glamour with even the day pieces only worthy of the most elegant and exquisite invitations, and included a sequence of lilac floral lurex pieces, black and copper or alternatively metallic sea green camouflage trouser suits that consisted of oversize jackets teamed with cigarette trousers and pencil skirts trimmed with ostrich ostrich feathers. Da Silva Ajayi continues to add a dollop historicism to her collections with leg of mutton sleeves on blouses, a disco diva worthy shot teal suit and reprising the underwear as outer wear concept via a lingerie inspired two piece. But the overall theme remains never knowingly leave the house under-dressed. Some fashion critics argue that LDA from season to season is somewhat repetitive and is thus is not as exciting as some of the more avant-garde designers working in Nigeria, however there is much to be said for a designer who understands deeply how her core customer wishes to present themselves, interprets their wants and creates collections they keep desiring.

Ji Won Choi was a bold and choice for a runway presentation. The Parsons School of Design graduate has placed sustainability at the heart of her business and her pieces are designed in such a way as to be worn in numerous ways, thus reducing excessive consumption. For the audience, seeing silhouettes that referenced far east Asian cultures (Choi is originally from South Korea) might have been quite the aesthetic jolt but it was refreshing nevertheless.

In the instance of Taibo Bacar, the audience was treated to a collection that screamed resort by way of one’s Upper East Side apartment. matching trouser suits with jewelled headbands and monogrammed silk shirts felt very Tory Burch-lite and compared to previous collections from him there were few stand straight to attention moments.

Tweed coats, navy metallics, lace and proportion play and black patent flats teamed with every ensemble certainly gave IDMA-NOF’s collection a cohesiveness visually but beyond that it never fully took flight. As with many brands that have niche and in the instance of IDMA-NOF, famous customers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the wheels will continue to turn but this collection doesn’t stand as one the brand’s best.

Gert-Johan Coetzee has a reputation as the go-to for the red carpet in his native South Africa and beyond with the likes of Bonang Matheba acting as the brand’s muse and many a wealthy bride opting for one of his creations as their reception or indeed bridal shut down dress. It was thus a shock that this collection saw him dabble with streetwear and denim. This being Coetzee the silhouette was close to the body wherever possible and sweatshirts were given the necessary bling via sequins and embellishment. Evolution in a designer is always welcome but the overall effect felt somewhat forced and lacking in the insouciance and youth propelled exuberance that is innately part of streetwear’s DNA. This is not to say that he should remain in an evening gown silo, but a collaboration might have been a wiser starting point before a deep dive into an aesthetic that is clearly not his forte. More successful was the other big theme of the evening in his collection which was the Italian Renaissance with silk prints that echoed the works of the grand palaces of Venice and Florence and brocade evening jackets for men that would be worthy of any black tie event.

A year is a long time in fashion and it speaks much of the eventful one had by LaQuan Smith that he returned to GTB Fashion Weekend to close the event itself. By many metrics he was worthy of the slot: a year that has not only seen him continue to dress the likes of Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez and Gigi Hadid but also sign a lucrative deal designing for online behemoth ASOS.com. Furthermore, his take no prisoners fierce and sexy aesthetic is one that will resonate with the Nigerian market, where slaying is not so much a nice to have as a mantra to live one’s life by. This season sheer dresses were teamed with oversized jackets and more modest iterations of revealing bodice and trousers or high slit evening skirts also offered. Smith also proposed a return for the lycra body suit for both genders with the women’s iteration being super high legged and in both instances soliciting cheers from the audience who he had eating from his hand from the offset. Luxe fabrics were aplenty with fur and rich velvets being the cover up of choice for the scandalous transparent pieces. Overall, Smith’s hip-hop hottie aesthetic is very in tune with the popular mood right now and in many ways reflects Dapper Dan’s comment of black culture informing popular culture today. The collection refines some of the motifs but still feels authentic – no wonder the tills continue to ring.

And so GTB Fashion Weekend concluded with an after-party where the worlds of fashion, finance and society collided in a standing-room only VIP Lounge. It is interesting times for the event, which by virtue of its focus of combining domestic and global talent on the runways, a huge retail fair in the main hall and masterclasses with an international roster of speakers continues to garner support and influence. Whether the tripartite approach has scalability is open to debate and indeed it would be interesting to see how the event evolves as Africa’s place in the global fashion landscape changes.

GTB Fashion Weekend 2018 Day One Review

Posted on November 23, 2018 by mazzi

A week is a long time in politics and it’s even more so the case in fashion, with feeds getting filled with newer content. must-buys and epic runway images by the nanosecond, however, this year’s GTB Fashion Weekend afforded itself more than a few memorable moments that have kept the fashion fam talking. Coming so close in the calendar after Lagos Fashion Week, comparisons are inevitable, but one can argue that the two events are an entire different offering. Yes, there are runway shows (more of later) but the centre pieces of GTB’s event are the Masterclasses, which have a veritable who’s who of Fashion Royalty come and share their experiences in the industry with a rapt audience, and a marketplace where fashion retailers can engage directly with potential customers and add to their bottom line.

Masterclass high moment came from Nikki Ogunnaike Style Director of Elle.com who held the packed audience’s attention with her blend of relatable bon mots and fashion expertise. As an American of Nigerian descent it was perhaps easier for her to connect with the crowd, something that in previous years some masterclass speakers had struggled with, but her personality shone through when she spoke at length of the importance of authenticity. She also recognised the current mood in fashion when she stated: “There is a diversity of voices right now and that is so amazing. It’s revolutionised the industry.” Her statement was particularly powerful as it implied that the fight for everyone’s voice to be heard had to a greater extent been won, and that we can all allow ourselves a collective sigh of relief that the era of deducing cultures and alternative narratives to clichéd tropes was something lazy journalists could no longer get away with. Fingers crossed this remains the norm and is not a passing trend.

But onto the shows which were an intriguing mix of designers from Nigeria, South Africa, France and the United States. It was intriguing as the immediate assumption one would have is that the pieces shown on the night were either going to be stocked or easily available in Nigeria, which in the instance of the in the case of the Nigerian designers Ituen Basi and Gozel Green and Senegalese brand Sukeina was certainly the case, but less so with others. It returns to the question of the core purpose of the shows themselves which seemed more geared to entertaining and putting a spotlight on creatives rather than acting as a window for retail buyers to assess and potentially order collections. The energy was very much experiential, the shows’ core objective seemed to be for the audience to be immersed in the designers’ vision, to celebrate the best of black talent be it on the continent or in the wider diaspora and because this is Lagos, to see and be seen. With this as the remit one has a clearer framework with which to assess the shows themselves and in turn to manage expectations.

Opening was Ituen Basi a veteran of the Nigerian fashion scene who chose to make a collection that celebrated the country and its history using the 1970’s and the music of Fela Kuti as its lens, complete with a soundtrack of his greatest hits. It certainly made for a cheerful and involuntary foot tapping show: models walked the runway with broad matte red lip smiles, T-shirts were adorned with slang phrases such as “Scatter, Scatter’ or more ones political messages that spoke to tribal unity and voter bribes. and lace body suits were given a dose of 21st century zing courtesy of their neon pink and acid yellow hues, strip fringing, some thing of a signature for Basi also featured. Aubergine and fuchsia pink were presented as the new neutral, contrasting strongly against the brights. Whilst this was not Basi’s strongest showing there was enough there to keep devotees happy.

Collection of the night belonged to Sukeina who presented a collection that was entitled ‘Gates – A Tale Of Devine Femininity” and in short was a visual celebration of what it is to be a woman. I will admit that I am always biased when a designer dares to stick their head above the parapet and present a cohesive vision for how he sees women presenting themselves in any given season and Creative Director Omar Salam more than rose to the occasion. His signature body con with mesh and crochet and beaded panelled dresses were present and correct but added to the mix were shorter pieces that swapped pencil silhouettes for sassy fringed skirts that ended mid thigh. Black was the dominant colour but there was also a red sequence and black pieces that were accented with turquoise, yellow, and in some iterations lime which evoked the colour ways seen in Maasai beaded jewellery. The shut down ensembles came via the pieces that had sculptural and origami style folds. A white coat dress was reminiscent of a flower in bloom and a black dress that comprised of beaded mesh and sculptured silk also impressed. The energy in the room distinctly changed and the rapturous applause merely confirmed what was evident on the runway.

Romeo Hunte’s collection was the definitive shout-out on the runway to all of the lovers of streetwear who began to scream loudly the moment the bass dropped on his runway playlist. A heavy focus on outwear but with scant else teamed with it, especially with womenswear, meant we all received and understood the memo fully – clothes that only those with swag for days need attempt to wear. This is not to say that the looks were repetitive: from deconstructed parkas to off the shoulder puffer jackets, to bombers in army camouflage print with exposed shoulders and a Macintosh coat dress with neon piping, he ensured that outerwear was on lock. Some might counter, how can you wear this in the tropics of Lagos, but if you keep everything else to a bare minimum and blast the proverbial AC on full, your look won’t falter.

Both Gozel Green and Adama Paris had shown at Lagos Fashion Week but it wasn’t a straight reiteration for those of us who had attended both. In the instance of Gozel Green the collection was larger and one could now see clearly how it was a tribute to the two creative directors’ late father, Professor Ossie Onuora Enekwe, whose love of formal attire is translated into pieces that celebrate menswear motifs such as suit lapels and classic shirts but retained the play on proportion and fluidity of fabric that have become the brand’s trademarks. For Adama Paris, it felt like the sequel to their prior offering which had seen pieces only in black, but in this instance we were presented a meditation of white, with chiffon, cotton and tulle all making an appearance.

Clive Rundle is a South African institution who by virtue of longevity should be applauded. One could certainly tell that he knew the anatomy of what made a show: he had models seated before commencing their walks for instance, adding theatre to his presentation. However, the collection consisted of a collision of ideas, shapes, themes and palettes that never seemed to come fully together. Whilst one can remain a relevant and important voice whatever one’s age – observe the continued reign of Kaiser Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel, it’s a thin line between being a legend and appearing dated.

Closing the night and also providing the evening with a political bent was South African designer David Tlale who presented a series of maxi dresses with giants of Both Africa’s political past’s faces printed and with an accompanying quote. Customers could pick from Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Winnie Mandela or be more alternative and rock a piece with Steve Biko, Walter Sisulu or Oliver Tambo instead. It felt as if the designer was challenging all to acknowledge that twenty four years after the end of Apartheid rule was symbolised by Mandela’s election to the presidency, the realities of black inclusion and equality remain very much on the surface. From this bold start Tlale presented a collection that didn’t stand still with a wide array of silhouettes, palettes, and a typical metallic evening wear sequence. The clothes that followed felt somewhat discordant after such a strong opening, as if the collection had been done in conjunction with the marketing department who were concerned with appealing to as wide a customer base as possible, rather than allowing Tlale to create a clear narrative for customers to identify with, which the t-shirt dresses so tantalisingly hinted at. It was a pity as in our saturated and choice ridden world it is stories that resonate rather than shapes or motifs that prompt us to buy into a brand long-term.

As the evening closed it was clear that fashion is a cultural driving force to be reckoned with in Nigeria. The packed venue, the cheers, the subsequent trending hashtags all attest to the insatiable appetite for clothes, beauty and conveying that you are living your best life via your sartorial and lifestyle choices. In fact, if commitment and interest were the only barometers by which an industry’s importance was measured, then fashion would have long trounced oil and gas in this part of the world. But for the runway segment to work on its own there needs to be a more deliberate curation of who is actually on it. Thankfully, everything ran to schedule with a barely noticeable ten minute delay, but one was still left wanting more: maybe it was the scene that was set by such a strong masterclass roster, or perhaps the slick production and staging whetted the appetite for a true visual spectacular, but Sukeina asides it was a quiet night for African fashion.