A week ago, a rally organized by far-right activist Tommy Robinson filled the streets of London. Marchers were protesting what they consider a war of attrition against Britain’s proud “Indigenous” culture being waged by migrants. Racist ideas were espoused, police were assaulted, arrests were made. It is worth mentioning that the soul of modern Britain is nothing like what the rally’s organizers allege it to be. Centuries of global empires and a post–World War II influx of people from its former subjects have irrevocably shifted the cultural landscape and social fabric of this country—arguably for the better.
The positive effects of migration are never far from the mind of Foday Dumbuya, the Sierra Leone–born, London-based creative director of Labrum. “I’ve always used my work to talk about movement and migration and how, through it, we give birth to new generations and new ideas of culture,” he said before his spring show. “When you come to somewhere like the UK as a young person—when you leave Sierra Leone at, say, six years old—you retain a part of where you came from, but you also embed yourself within a new cultural context, and something new is born of that.”
Dumbuya referred to this process as an “osmosis,” describing how those who migrate synthesize their “imported” cultures with that of their adopted homeland to profoundly enriching effect. “Just think about something like Notting Hill Carnival,” he said. The annual London street party is rooted in West London’s Caribbean diaspora and is now, almost six decades after its initiation, unanimously regarded as an anchor point of summer in the city.
Taking to Westminster’s Central Hall—a baroque edifice a stone’s throw from the seat of Britain’s government, not far from last week’s march—Labrum’s “case study in cultural osmosis” manifested as an all-out spectacle that sat somewhere between a typical fashion show and a night at the Proms. Backed by an ensemble that comprised a full chamber orchestra, a jazz band, and a trio of djembe drummers—not to mention singers and spoken-word artists like Julianknxx, Obongjayar, and Odumodublvck—models filed out in looks that mixed the traditional sartorial vernaculars of Britain and West Africa.
Which, naturally, meant tailoring—lots of it. Wide-set suits were cut with swagger in hefty cowrie-shell motif-bearing cloth; slinky wrap jackets were constructed with open backs in jewel-toned satins. A poetic softness came through in gauzy caftans striped with vertical felled seams, offering a more figurative riff on the idea of movement that was at the collection’s core. That theme was broached more literally in suiting crafted in passport stamp–bearing jacquard and an array of trench coats and tailored twinsets in khaki green canvas, styled with stacked officers’ hats. “I was really thinking about the military men you see when people cross borders,” Dumbuya said.
That was perhaps heavy-handed, but, at the same time, the point being made here warranted blunt underscoring. The “cultural osmosis” of which Dumbuya spoke is not a case of one force conquering another; it’s a process that instills an organic sense of balance—harmony, even. And if you really want to dig into the osmosis analogy, you could remark that it is an essential precondition to life.
