• Ozwald Boateng moves like no other in the field of modern tailoring; combining classical British flavor with African lifestyle. In 1994 he presented his first fashion show in Paris as the first tailor ever to present in Paris.

ARISE Fashion Week

Lagos 2018 | impressions

Ozwald Boateng was born in London in 1967. He grew up in London with his parents who came from Ghana. His mother worked as a seamstress and made him sew. Fascinated by his father’s immaculate suits, the young Ozwald received his first own suit at the age of five. He was inspired by the classical British tailoring. At the age of fourteen, he took a summer job sewing linings into suits.

Later, during his computer science studies, his girlfriend at the time took him to design, so he switched to fashion and design studies.  When he helped a friend to design clothes, he received great encouragement for his work and began selling his own creations to a menswear shop in Covent Garden.

In his early twenties, and having dressed celebrities such as Mick Jagger, Jimmy Paige and Spike Lee, Ozwald Boateng set up a design studio on London’s famous Portobello Road, where he would start a journey that would see him change the course of men’s fashion and become one of the most recognisable names in the industry.

In 1994 he presented his first fashion show in Paris as the first tailor ever to present in Paris. 

Road To Paris 1994 | Short Film

After the show was a huge success, Tommy Nutter encouraged him to open his first boutique on Saville Row in 1995. Boateng’s contemporary menswear designs helped Saville Row reach out to the younger demographic.

In 2003 the first women’s fragrance was launched, consisting of two separate fragrances that could be worn together or separately. A year later, Boateng became the new creative director for menswear at Givenchy until 2007.

In 2005 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London honored Boateng’s work with a retrospective exhibition of his designs.

Tailor to the Stars

In 2008 another flagship store and headquarters opened on Saville Row. Boateng reinterprets British sewing art and adds modern and fresh elements to his excellent and luxurious designs.

Boateng designed and orchestrated a show at the 9^th Annual African Summit in Accra which coincided with cessation of the 200 year old transatlantic slave trade and Ghana’s fifty years of independence.

Boateng is also a famous costume designer having designed costumes for box office hits like Sex and the city, Hannibal, The Matrix, Oceans 13, Tomorrow Never Dies, Ugly Betty and Rush Hour 3.

Apollo Theater | Harlem 2018

In 2018 he launched his first-ever womenswear in the historic Apollo Theater in Harlem with the packed auditorium helping the venue to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance as well as Boateng’s move into a new category.

The runway was a mix of men’s and women’s looks for a collection that was in many ways a world away from traditional British tailoring as color and African-inspired print were the key takeaways.

Ozwald Boateng | Arise Fashion Week 2018

Ozwald Boateng moves like no other in the field of modern tailoring; combining classical British flavor with African lifestyle

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The fashion label Joray Fashion was founded in 2006 by fashion designer Joannah Kebirungi Menke in Mbarara, Uganda. Normally, African fashion for me is something my parents buy and wear to church on Sunday. In recent years, with the hype around Afro Beat, successful bloggers from the Diaspora and music videos, young people have become much more interested in fashion and beauty from Africa.

The vision of Joannah Kebirungi Menke is to combine African fabrics and elegant designs into a unique fashion, invigorating the fashion world with intense colors and new patterns.

The African fashion label Joray Fashions was founded by the fashion designer Joannah Kebirungi Menke in 2006 in Mbarara, Uganda.

Joannah Kebirungi Menke was born in a small village in western Uganda in East Africa. To fulfill her dream of having her own fashion label, she learned tailoring after graduation and founded the fashion label Joray Fashions. She dared a new beginning with her fashion label in 2017 in Berlin.

The Roots

Joannah Kebirungi Menke’s vision is to combine African fabrics and elegant designs to create a unique African fashion, revitalising the fashion world with the intense colours and new patterns of African fabrics.

Joray Fashions Shoes

In 2017, she ventured a new start in Berlin with her fashion label. Joray Fashions often uses wax print fabrics to create beautiful and elegant long dresses and shirts that almost sweep the floor. These pieces even go well with any high fashion event.”

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Fashion and the uncomplicated enjoyment of a quick meal – probably two of the most indispensable things of our time that could not be more different. Maki Osakwe, Nigerian designer and founder of the fashion label Maki Oh, united these two themes in her Spring/Summer 2019 collection by taking memories of her home country for inspiration and translate it into the language of fashion.

After taking a break from New York Fashion Week, Maki Oh designer Amaka Osakwe is back in town. With her distinctive take on artisanal Nigerian fabrics, the Lagos designer has amassed a small but highly engaged fan base. In her time off, Osakwe found some much-needed headspace. She began to see the wants and needs of the globally minded, artistically inclined women who wear her clothes with fresh eyes.

Womanism

After studying fashion studies at Arts University Bournemouth, Amaka “Maki” Osakwe launched her own label Maki Oh in 2010. In 2012 the designer was discovered in the US fashion scene. As one of a few African designers, she has presented her fashion regularly at New York Fashion Week. International stars like Beyoncé and Rihanna, as well as the style icon and former first lady of the US, Michelle Obama, are wearing the fashion of Maki Oh. International magazines such as the New York Times, Business of Fashion, Vogue and many more report about the designer. The fashion label shows strong cultural Identity and uses its designs as a channel for direct communication and telling stories that are shaped by cultural ties. The designer sees herself as a follower of the “Womanism”, not to be mixed up with the more common term of feminism. Dark-skinned women can often identify more with womanism, since the movement does not only deal with female equality but also with ethnic discrimination.

Traditional African elements with western silhouettes

Maki Oh stands for the combination of traditional african elements with western silhouettes, which is also evident in the “Buka Special” collection from spring 2019. Not only the chosen models but also the recurring prints that are hand-dyed with indigo colours refer to the traditional background and have a deeper meaning. These prints can be interpreted as the recognizable theme in all of Maki’s collections. Osakwe’s philosophy gives a look on classic ideals of beauty and at the same time a construct of responsibility, strength, and maintaining culture to create a complex simplicity in her looks.

The inspiration for the collection comes from Osakwe’s hometown. The so-called Bukas are small takeaway restaurants where you meet to spend the evening together. They are usually only run by women. Osakwe wants to show the strength of these women, who live in precarious positions, in her collection. The chosen materials and the design of the clothes through knots and gathers are allusions to the packaging techniques of the restaurants. Elements such as a slipdress in silk are worn with casual shirts combined with sporty sandals. Thereby acquire the necessary coolness factor and a fashionable simplicity. Statements on shirts like “Fresh Fish” create the connection between African street food and seem to be striking. The designer plays with cutouts and transparency to allow the skin to show up without making their creations too sexy.

She combines provocative elements with casual cuts and creates a balance between simple elegance and convenience. The collection deals with the dissolution of gender boundaries which is still a taboo topic in Nigeria today. By using divergent model types, such as Richie Shazam, who classifies himself as nonbinary, Maki Oh inserts more diversity and acceptance into the fashion industry.

African traditions + modern cuts

Maki Oh makes important statements on highly topical issues and draws attention to the life in Nigeria by referring to her cultural background. The label creates a mix of African traditions with the help of modern cuts interesting for the western world and gives the consumers an insight into the beauty of Africa. Because of her success at New York Fashion Week and the presence in international fashion magazines, Maki Osakwe reaches and appeals to a wide audience to transport her message to the world. “It was important for me to celebrate the full spectrum of society — after all, we all breathe the same air, eat the same food. ” – an important concept, that we should all become aware of.

MAKI OH @MONDO 2017 | POPDRUM | Music Party

collaboration with MD.H Berlin | www.mediadesign.de | fashion news by Alea Schonhardt and Meike Schallock

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Impressions

THE FOUNDERS

Marie Darouiche was born in 1952 in Cameroon, in a family as we know it from movies and novels: A big clan, many generations almost under one roof, creative people with musical and artistic talents, who inspired each other. Marie’s path led her to Europe, and fortunately to Munich. Her love for African material brought her with her. For her it was a logical step to sew the first dirndl out of a pagne” a good five years ago. At first only on order, until she was able to join forces with her sister and a friend in 2010 and NOH NEE was born. She is the heart of the studio and surprises with new dirndl creations every season.

Rahmée Wetterich was much younger than her sister Marie when she arrived in Munich. Also equipped with an extra portion of creativity. After many successful years in the fashion industry, she opened an interior design studio near the Nymphenburg Castle in Munich and worked with exclusive French fabric and furniture producers. When Marie invented the Dirndl à l’ Africaine, she set the first course to turn it into NOH NEE.

Colourmix

They grew up in Cameroon and now live in Munich: the sisters Marie Darouiche and Rahmée Wetterich draw their designs from the unique colours of Africa. “Nature,” says Rahmée, “shows us how colors can be combined. Once the framework is created, everything can be made to blossom in it”.

Dirndl à l’ Africaine

It is only logical that the idea of combining artistic, colourful African fabrics with Bavarian cuts was born. The frame for the Dirndl is a traditional Bavarian Dirndl cut from the fifties. “With the African fabrics,” says Marie, “the dirndls become a tribute to a woman’s pride, a fabric-based attitude to life that, with jackets and accessories, sets no limits to your imagination.

Behind the concept of the “Dirndl à l’ Africaine” is Rahmée’s vision of “Colourmix” – the creative, exciting exchange of world cultures: “It will play a major role in the future,” she says, “people will get to know each other, create something new and see their traditions in a new light. And because women love our fabrics so much, we have been offering a small collection since 2013: coats, skirts, dresses, blouses and trousers which we are continuously expanding.

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