[ad_1]
Ever since Nigerian-born British vogue designer Duro Olowu launched his eponymous label in 2004, his aesthetic has remained remarkably constant. Known for his use of coloration and sample, Olowu additionally favors the sharply tailor-made silhouettes of his multicultural 1970s upbringing, together with fitted jackets, precision-cut wide-leg trousers, billowing capes and kimonos, and intricately lower but liberating clothes with hemlines beneath the knee — all rendered in vivid and unusually juxtaposed materials, patterns, and textures.
Installation view of the exhibition “Duro Olowu: Seeing” in Chicago, 2020. Photo: Kendall McCaugherty Credit: Prestel
His first assortment included one costume with an empire-waist silhouette that mixed classic couture silks and modern materials of his personal design. After editor Sally Singer featured the costume in American Vogue, it acquired worldwide acclaim and offered out at Barneys New York, Ikram in Chicago, Browns and Harrods in London, and different worldwide stockists from Milan to Japan. Dubbed the “Duro Dress,” it turned Olowu’s signature look, and in 2005 he received New Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards — the solely designer ever to have received this award earlier than their first runway present.
“Duro Dress” Spring-Summer 2005 by Peter Farago & Ingela Klemetz Farago. Credit: Peter Farago & Ingela Klemetz Farago
From the outset, the designer’s self-taught imaginative and prescient — Olowu skilled as a lawyer — was daring, recent, and chic, a mirrored image of a refined aesthetic eye and agency philosophical grounding: “I really want people to understand what fashion and the culture of style could mean if one thought beyond the usual boundaries but also always about the wearer.”
This responsiveness to the individuality of our bodies and the aspirations of those that put on his garments is knowledgeable by classes realized at a younger age about the energy of vogue. Regardless of the place he was in the world, he was uncovered to individuals who dressed deliberately, presenting themselves in ways in which spoke volumes about their identification.
This contains his Jamaican mom — who combined garments from Yves Saint Laurent’s Rive Gauche line “with pieces made from fabrics she picked up in Nigeria, Switzerland, and London that she would have run up by tailors in Lagos” — but additionally the different girls who surrounded him as a toddler in Lagos, Nigeria, in addition to his cousins and aunts in London.
Clockwise from left: Duro Olowu, Spring-Summer 2020, Look 22. Photo: Christina Ebenezer. “Omohundro” (2002) by Terry Adkins. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Salon 94, New York. “Laurette with a Cup of Coffee” (1916-17) by Henri Matisse. Courtesy of Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York). Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago/ Art Resource, NY. Credit: Prestel
Clockwise from prime: “Bound to Fail” (from the portfolio Eleven Color Photographs) (1966-67/1970/2007) by Bruce Nauman. Courtesy of Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Nathan Keay, MCA Chicago. “No Face (House)” (2017) by Simone Leigh. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Duro Olowu, Spring-Summer 2020, Look 7. Photo: Christina Ebenezer. Credit: Prestel
Clockwise from prime: “Teardrop I” (1996) by Magdalene Odundo, Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, NY. Duro Olowu, Spring-Summer 2020, Look 1. Photo: Christina Ebenezer. “Wedding Reception of Emilija and Romas Sakodolskis, Pakstas Hall, West 38th Street” (1977) by Jonas Dovydenas, Photo: Nathan Keay, MCA Chicago. Credit: Prestel
Using each his singular aesthetic and enterprise acumen to carve out a distinct segment in the trade, Olowu has attracted a formidable clientele of highly effective and dependable girls. And underlying his creation of vogue for girls is a type of radical respect: “I’m just amazed by how women can do so much regardless of natural or imposed obstacles, and I feel that it’s my duty to make sure they look good and feel comfortable doing it… Whether I’m initially inspired by Eileen Gray, Miriam Makeba, Pauline Black, or Amrita Sher-Gil, I always end up designing for women of all ages and ethnicities, women whose way of life and work I respect. Then I hope that the clothes I’ve come to, with them as inspiration, would be of interest to them.”
[ad_2]
Source hyperlink