The star of Reva Ochuba’s latest look book for her label Ifeoma is not a model, nor an influencer, nor a celebrity, but rather the designer herself. The campaign is austere and at times even stark: One image shows Ochuba against a white wall, ominously standing in a feather-trimmed jacket with angled fabric at the sleeves extending downward like daggers. In another photograph, the designer stoically poses in a sharp-shoulder jacket with a cinched waist and a floor-grazing skirt with an angular trumpet hem. On her arm is a bag with a sharp, oval-shaped flat bottom and a small circular mirror on its body.
Ochuba launched her small but buzzy label in 2017—following an internship at Eckhaus Latta—but put it on hiatus to travel and work in adjacent industries, like at 032c magazine in Berlin. Now she’s relaunching her label this year. This all-black collection—crafted from rich wool, pony hair, and sheepskin—is a departure from Ochuba’s previous work, which is far more colorful and midriff baring. “If you look at my Instagram feed, there is a lot of color and then it just stops,” she says. “I couldn’t really keep up with the aesthetic I had going on.”
As Ochuba relaunched her brand, she asked herself the basic question: Why am I getting dressed? She toned down the laissez-faire attitude that defined her previous collections and made it more modest. The pieces have certainly transitioned from fun and saucy (midriff-exposing knit crop tops) to more covered up (monastic, sharply structured jackets). “What I was doing before had so much more flaneur and was [about] the woman of the city having a bite to eat,” Ochuba says. “Does she have a job? Probably not. I’m actively working, and I have a job, and I’m trying to be someone serious.”
While the collection was photographed by Ochuba’s creative team in Paris, the pieces were produced in Tbilisi, Georgia, where Ochuba currently lives. There’s a whisper of the Georgian aesthetic in the clothes; in Tbilisi, you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to see a sea of citizens dressed in all black. The Georgian penchant for head-to-toe black acted as a tabula rasa for Ochuba’s brand relaunch. “This black is like a perfume shop, and you sniff the coffee beans to refresh your palette,” says Ochuba.
The designer, who was raised in Los Angeles, eventually settled in Tbilisi after living in New York, Istanbul, and Prague. The move was a fruitful choice: The small capital city is known for its centuries-old leather and textile industries. With the help of a Georgian-speaking assistant, Ochuba works closely with tailors and cobblers to create her clothes and accessories. The factories allow Ochuba to focus on small batches. “I can grow at a pace that is substantial for me,” she says. When Ochuba is not producing in Georgia, she is working on the brand’s image with her creative network in Paris.
The collection has echoes of the original capsule wardrobe, created by Elsa Schiaparelli in 1946, at a time when women began to enter the workforce and leave the home more. The collection consisted of exact pieces that women would need on the go. In Ochuba’s case, all her offerings, from a slick black leather pump with cutouts to a hulking cream fur scarf, fit into her suitcase.
Ochuba realized she had made the perfect travel edit after she forgot to bring her own clothes on a trip to Paris and was left with only her collection. Luckily, she had a piece for every occasion. “I was so focused on the collection that I didn’t pack anything myself,” says Ochuba. “There were five pairs of shoes and outfits for every occasion—for a night out, for a business brunch, for cocktails. It fits into a medium-size suitcase that fits into the 20-kilo airline limit. It worked out in that way.”
Though there is the influence of Tbilisi’s all-black wardrobe, Ifeoma’s look book is relatively placeless, with no overt influence of any city. Instead it reflects the professional nomadic-woman lifestyle that Ochuba has adopted over the years. Each piece is utilitarian and personal and doesn’t evoke a specific city or country.
And while Ochuba’s clothes have a timeless feel—you can’t go wrong in structured black pieces—the collection’s essence is modern and shape-shifting. “It’s more than, this is a French brand, this is a Paris brand, this is an American brand, which is why I made the face of the company me. It isn’t associated with anything but what I am doing, what I am eating, what I am reading, and what I am participating in,” says Ochuba. “That has so much more potential than an actual place.”
