Mowalola (Q3451)
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Mowalola is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Mowalola |
Mowalola is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Mowalola Ogunlesi has for the past two seasons disrupted the Fashion Week schedule with last-minute catwalks staged at industrial venues in far-out postcodes. The news that the designer would this time be inserting herself into an off-schedule closing slot was confirmed with less than 24 hours notice. Bold: the London after-parties would have to wait—and perhaps not happen at all considering the show ran more than 90 minutes late—but then again, who really cared? Not Ogunlesi, who is prone to provocation, nor the thousands of her fans in yeti boots and skin-tight mini dresses queuing around the block. It helped, too, that she put on the most stimulating show of the entire season.This was a mad and at times perverse spectacle quite unlike the twinkling elegance that has so far proliferated in the London collections. It was evident first from the choice of location—an air hangar-sized warehouse in north Greenwich dotted with go-go cages and simulacrum club bathrooms with one red platform splintering through the middle—and second from the make-up artist that could be spotted oiling the length of Ogunlesi’s arms in a backstage room heavy with cigarette smoke. Was the designer preparing to make an appearance on the catwalk herself? A coy shrug was as good as a “Yes.” And when the house lights did eventually dim, she spent the duration of the show performing 10 work-in-progress tracks from her upcoming album, titled Dirty Pop, in a platinum-blond wig as groups of models were intermittently dispatched into her seedy mise-en-scène.“I don’t wanna keep doing the same thing every season,” said Ogunlesi during a post-show conversation. “I’m on this Earth to do more than fashion and so I wanted this to be a full expression of everything I feel. Doing that with just clothes is not enough.” Said clothes were often imperceptible—such was the scale of the venue—but their attitude was obvious from the copious amount of skin that captured the light: ultra-cropped bikers, hirsute micro skirts, arm-binding tube tops cut from transparent latex, and sling-shot bodysuits with floor-scraping trains. (Even Ogunlesi’s shell jackets had been constructed with G-string crotches.) A score of deep-necked mini dresses, drop-shouldered bombers and toe-baring boots were made from cow hide, while LBDs, martial jackets, and enormous crescent bags were either printed or airbrushed to give the impression of pelt. “It’s all quite raw and animalistic,” said Ogunlesi.
“It represents all the different skins I’ve had to climb in and out of while traveling from Nigeria to London, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Korea…”
20 September 2024
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.
15 September 2023
“Sue Me” was the challenge on look 17’s tank. After this show The Yankees, the NBA, Marlboro, and MoMA might well feel entitled to take Mowalola Ogunlesi up on that. But they shouldn’t. Their witty bootlegging at the hands of Ogunlesi was a creatively valid (if legally dubious) appropriation of IP that served to garnish a New York-themed collection that dripped with generationally-specific, but also broadly eternal, tensions and needs.Backstage the designer explained her rationale: “It’s about the collapse of society. What I envision people wearing at the end time.” That collapse’s trigger, she reckoned, might be sparked by the membrane that now connects us all: “low-key we’re literally in the last fight between life and tech. And I feel like a lot of corporations are gaining massive power over a lot of things.” This is true, but was ever thus, just via different platforms. Still, thisThe Last of Usstarting-point, albeit fungus-free, triggered a highly entertaining fashion dystopia.Mowalola is a powerfully desirous marque: the ingeniously-gartered Zoom-call-with-benefits, pants-down jeans and skirt; the crotch-hands shorts, pants, and skirts; the Insert Disc Here dress (how analogue!); and the closing series of dancehall fits all pointed to that, as did the masks. Said Ogunlesi of these: “it’s about an aspect of life that is kind of put in the dark, which is our true desires. A lot of people don’t celebrate them. You have politicians who do things, and when it comes out, they act like it wasn’t them.”There will always be traction for a brand built in youth that throws barbs at the hypocrisy of the elders—epitomized here of course by tailoring—and which champions freedom of expression in resistance to systems. Mowalola looks like a fresh chapter of an old story that should read well in the same digital landscape against which she is cleverly positioning herself as a questioner.
18 February 2023
When Mowalola Ogunlesi appeared for her bow after a three-year runway hiatus, the room roared. Ogunlesi has a strong community of fashion lovers who love her—even outside her physical show space, her legions of online fans offered an outpouring of support for their girl Mowa’s big return. That passion bleeds into Ogunlesi’s clothing and her first solo show after participating in Fashion East for several seasons.“Before, I would cut myself off from expressing in certain ways because I thought I shouldn’t do that,” she told Vogue Business before her Paris debut. But the designer learned that “whatever feeds me, I should just do it.” What was feeding Ogunlesi this season was thievery and evolving her aesthetic beyond the trenches, tees, and accessories she is known for. She titled her collection “Burglarwear,” inspired by all types of criminals, from kidnappers to stockbrokers to the priesthood. There were literal renderings of these themes—the show opened with a yellow leather cross harness, closed with a beautiful sheer cross-embellished veil worn over a nude body, and Wall Street suits were cropped to Mowalola proportions in between—but her most interesting propositions were her distortions to the human body.Sexiness has been a staple of the Mowalola look since the inception of her brand—backstage before the show she expressed frustration about gendered views of sex appeal, “that’s why I have women showing nipples and men showing nipples,” a pregnant model in a beaded dress and a male model in some of the lowest rise pants seen this season. But rather than just show off the body, she reshaped it. Inspired by the way kidnappers would zip tie wrists—“the same position if you are wearing handcuffs,” she said—she created garments that held arms clasped out in front. The best was a white dress that pointed the model’s elbows up to the heavens. “I like the idea of weaponizing clothes, weaponizing shoes, weaponizing shoulders, weaponizing elbows,” she said with a smile, “Even my bag… sometimes I have to use my bag as a weapon.” Living as freely and expressing as purely as Ogunlesi does, unfortunately, sometimes require fighting for a space in fashion. She’s definitely up to the task.
26 June 2022