The Designer Reimagining Traditional West African Fabrics for a New Generation

Earlier this month in Lagos, Nigeria, the models Naomi Campbell and Alton Mason — she, an industry icon; he, one of the most in-demand faces in fashion now — walked the runway together at Arise Fashion Week, an annual showcase of ready-to-wear from across Africa. Striding hand in hand, they wore coordinating suits, finely striped and rendered in vivid colors (hibiscus pink, acid yellow), created by the Nigerian designer Kenneth Ize, whose work with hand-woven Yoruba aso oke fabrics, patterned textiles traditionally reserved for special occasions, has won him fans including Beyoncé, Donald Glover and Campbell. Ize, 29, founded his namesake label just three years ago, but his mission is already clear: “We’re reviving, reinterpreting and giving new context to artisan techniques that have given meaning to West African identity,” he says.

For Ize, who is a finalist for this year’s LVMH Prize for emerging talent, this show marked both the debut of his fifth men’s season and also his foray into women’s wear. The pieces he presented in both collections — free-flowing teal silk tunics, tailored two-piece suits in Crayola-bright colors and swingy skirts trimmed with rainbows of loose threads and worn over Nigerian wax-printed trousers — demonstrated the diversity of African design, old and new. “It’s important for us to have the freedom and ability to express exactly who we are — and where we are from,” says Ize. With their gender-neutral silhouettes and vibrant prints, Ize’s collections feel both contemporary and rooted in the traditional garments he remembers his mother wearing during his childhood. “Weeks before a special celebration, my mother and her friends would take over the whole house with rolls of material as they prepared their outfits,” he recalls. “I’d just sit there and watch my mother put her outfits together.”

While studying fashion and design at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, under the tutelage of first Bernhard Willhelm and later Hussein Chalayan, Ize continued to think about West Africa and its artisanal traditions, such as Nigerian batik patterning, printing and stitching. “The technical competency of the artisans is incredible — I just knew I had to work with them,” he says. “I didn’t think that we could separate our work from historical references. But I did think that we could work in a way that felt more representative of the African experience.” In 2016, he started his namesake label in Lagos. He now hopes his studio, currently located in the suburb of Sabo Yaba, where he has a small team, can function as a hub for the wide-ranging community of Nigerian artisans he works with. For the most part, his collaborators live in small villages near Lagos and the city of Ilorin “that aren’t always easy to find,” he explains. “There’s no real institutional framework to mobilize or support people who still practice this artisanship here,” he says. “I’d like to bring together a dedicated team in Lagos.”

For each new collection, Ize and his team source yarn from Lagos or Europe — often in fiery orange-reds, earthy yellows and royal blues — before giving them to the brand’s head weaver, Rakiya Momo, also known as Queen B. She and the other weavers then use hand looms and Yoruba-inspired weaving techniques to make the collection’s aso oke fabrics.

Each of Ize’s pieces connects the techniques and traditions that define Nigeria’s past with the ideas shaping its present. “We always try to find new ways of reinterpreting it,” he explains. In his women’s collection, not only has he revived contemporary aso oke styles seen in his men’s wear, such as micro-pleated shirts in geometric patterns made with metallic yarns from Kyototex in Japan, but he has also incorporated lace and embroidery for the first time, seen on aso oke garments such as vibrantly printed and color-blocked dresses. There are also prints of women’s faces by the young Nigerian artist Fadekemi Ogunsanya, which appear on billowing silk pants; polka-dot-printed green caftans with ruffled cuffs and collars; and aso oke scarves finished with metallic fringe and worn over softly tailored tangerine suits.

In 2019, many of the centuries-old techniques that Ize and his community of artisans use are in danger of disappearing; a shift from handicraft to mass production has weakened the infrastructure needed to support and pass down traditional weaving techniques. But through his collaborative design model, he is helping to sustain these crafts by creating innovative clothes for a younger generation. “It allows us to show a different, or at least a more nuanced, picture of African life and culture,” he says. “By exploring and nurturing existing cultures, we’ll create and inspire new ones.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/t-magazine/kenneth-ize.html