Off-schedule, way out by London City Airport, and clashing with the widely adored Chopova Lowena, Mowalola Ogunlesi’s Friday-nighter seemed on paper a potential car crash. Which was possibly the point. The thrill of living dangerously, and dressing like you do, is embedded forcefully into this designer’s practice.
Despite the many industry absences, around 1,000 people, a great crowd, queued outside The Beams venue. Backstage the designer, much more chill than last season, said the collection had been sparked by her first-ever viewing of David Cronenberg’s Crash. “I was really excited by the fetishization of pain through crashing,” she said. It prompted her to imagine “a whole universe that resides on the street,” filtered through a prism of ecstatic jeopardy.
“That T-shirt is obscene!”, tsked my benchmate—the charming 60-something Lagos-based mother of an Ogunlesi team-member—at the masturbating anime girl prints. Off-the-shoulder bombers with faux Highway Patrol patches were blessedly embroidered in a font too small for her to make out. Ogunlesi suggested her strapped higher than thigh-highs and micro skirts were inspired by street walkers. These, like the excellent dirty denims, seemed to emanate (without being derived from) a conceptual solar system adjacent to some of Glenn Martens’s work at Diesel. The pants that flashed cracks at the back and crotch hairlines were maybe subject to the influence of McQueen’s gravity. This was good company to keep: however the gartered, bisected pants and skirts, now a Mowalola signature, were all Ogunlesi’s own.
Livid bruises and extreme scars, some bordering C-section, were expertly applied in make-up on the models. Ogunlesi spoke of the pain and insecurity of steering her still-fledgling label and “using those emotions to put into the art.” Tonight, however, the venue, the casting, the production, and the free Chivas bar outside all suggested that this season the balm of funding had been applied to the tenderest point for any young designer—and it turned out the show had in part been supported by Kanye West and Bianca Censori. They were also in the audience.
Ogunlesi was first approached by Ye in 2017 and started working with him during lockdown on Yeezy Gap, she said, adding: “I feel very grateful for him… with him there’s no start and finish, everything is a process: you develop and it reveals itself. And that’s how I work as well.” Of Censori she added: “her energy is like a light. It s pretty special to have around, because she s incredibly smart.”
A series of twinning looks included a Lagerfeld salute, an Umbro bootleg, and a not-uncommercial flags-of-the world theme. This also ran into a poignant EU skirt meets Union Jack cap look. The extreme contrast of volumes in some sportswear looks made the generic appear particular. There was an oddly compelling insistence on placing menswear looks on patent leather oxfords. A series of trenches came cut high at the posterior to deny the butt rain protection: a pitch for Burberry? Ogunlesi demurred: “You know what? I used to want Givenchy: but now that McQueen is open…” Mowalola really does live dangerously.
This slideshow has been edited.
