What is the fashion connection between Africa and Italy, Suzy Menkes, fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, asks today in an IHT special report, as the annual Luxury Conference is set to convene in Rome on Thursday.
Her answer: the skill of human hands.
Italy’s craftsmanship is legendary and by far the most powerful in Europe. In Kenya women work on traditional embroidery patterns inherited from Masai ancestors or intricate crochet work handed down from mother to daughter, creating luxury products from designers such as Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood. The gulf between rural, native craft and sophisticated high fashion is narrowing, as consumers look deeper into the meaning of luxury in the 21st century. An African/Italian collaboration — with European know-how harnessed to traditional handwork — could produce an intriguing new take on genuinely global luxury, Ms. Menkes proposes.
Among the articles in the special report are dispatches by Ms. Menkes from Lagos, Nigeria, where she attended Lagos Fashion & Design Week. Here is what she saw:
The cornrow hair traced the scalp above a rainbow of eye shadow and a mouth polished with pink lipstick. On this curvy figure, the multipatterned dress flowed down toward fantastical platform-soled shoes.
And that was just one occupant of the front row during the fashion shows in Lagos last month.
The Nigerian people, upbeat and enthusiastic, seemed to relish the chance to watch shows rotating on the runway, or the opportunity to view an exhibition of bold purses. Woven, feathered and beaded by skillful fingers, these carefully crafted accessories gave a whole new meaning to “hand” bag.
In an international fashion world where a blasé boredom often engulfs the audience, the Lagos Fashion & Design Week was a tonic.
And she interviewed the designer Duro Olowu, who, she writes, has a right to describe himself as multicultural.
The designer Duro Olowu at the fabric market on Lagos Island. Mr. Olowu, who was born in Lagos, says he is inspired by the style and colors of his home town.Benedicte Kurzen for the International Herald TribuneThe designer Duro Olowu at the fabric market on Lagos Island.
Born of a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father, he was raised in Lagos, where he can still point out the crumbling colonial and modernist buildings that were the homes of his primary school and his family doctor. He has a world view.
In London, where he was named New Designer of the Year in 2005 at the British Fashion Awards, he works out of a studio in Portobello Road, a vintage hub, and a store tucked away in Mason’s Yard, St. James’s.
In New York, where he shows during the semiannual fashion weeks, he lives with his wife, Thelma Golden, director of the Studio Museum in Harlem.
The patterns and colors of his designs, which are sold around the world to concept stores like Ikram in Chicago and Biffi in Milan, seem intrinsically African. Yet Mr. Oluwu’s fabrics are often British-made prints of his own design. Or they are Italian, French or Swiss fabrics that reflect, in an eclectic, offbeat way, both his African heritage and an international sensibility.
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