Kenneth Ize (Q4924)
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Kenneth Ize is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Kenneth Ize |
Kenneth Ize is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Last summer, after competing for the LVMH Prize in 2019 and putting on a trio of Paris runway shows (with a couple of online-only pandemic collections in between), Kenneth Ize announced he was stepping away from the show circuit. “We have taken the decision to pause, reassess, and rejuvenate for the time being,” he wrote on Instagram. Though he had parted ways with his investor, six months later, the Nigerian designer was already back at it, only the January show he put on took place on the street in Ikoyi, his neighborhood in Lagos.That wasn’t the only difference. The majority of the lineup—“98% worth,” apparently—has been ingeniously made from upcycled garments and fabrics sourced at Lagos’s Katangua market, where traders sell cast-off clothes from America and elsewhere by the bale-ful.“This collection changed everything for me,” Ize said over Zoom. “Clothes are destroying the planet. It’s everyday; right now, it’s happening. And I think we need to do something.” Among the things he’s doing here: dyeing and bleaching button-downs in an XOXO motif (“I’m a bigGossip Girlfan, he said); overstitching the seams of used jeans and tees in a technique from the northern part of Nigeria called ise owo; and performing sartorial-metamorphoses by cutting out the shoulders of a fitted blazer, adding airy splices down the sides of trousers, and using vintage ties as embellishments of all kinds.Interspersed among the stylishly layered upcycled looks are pieces in the colorful handwoven aso oke fabric he’s made his signature, but they’re accents, not the main event. The trickle-down effects of the global fast fashion industry extend beyond the piles of discarded clothing at the Katangua market and others like it. “When everything is so cheap and so fast, you just want to buy it, and it’s affected the textile community in Nigeria,” Ize said. “Why can I not make a nice cotton shirt fabric here in Africa? I’m trying to revive something, but there are big obstacles.”“Forward Ever, Backward Never” is the name Ize gave the collection. Now that he’s developed these upcycling processes, he’s starting to think about how to put them into production, and though he’s not in a rush, he’s looking forward to returning to the Paris runway in the future. “I love the stage,” he said.
21 April 2023
Kenneth Ize’s show opened with a skirt suit in striped aso oke fabric featuring distinguishing details in the form of butterfly patches and fringed edges. Since his first Paris runway on the eve of the pandemic, when Naomi Campbell closed the show and made such a stir, aso oke has been at the center of Ize’s collections. It’s a traditional material hand-woven in Nigerian that he’s worked to keep from going extinct by setting up a factory. Over the seasons Ize has refreshed the color patterns, but the stripes have remained identifiable. His suits are badges of cool for the people who wear them signaling their support for this emerging designer.Variations on the theme for fall included a zip-front aso oke jacket spliced at the midriff and across the elbows with a royal blue knit cardigan, a blazer with a velvet yoke, and other more feminine shapes like a mini shift with a keyhole cut-out and a tunic-length camisole. Beyond the aso oke, Ize’s propositions weren’t fully realized, but it’s not necessarily crucial to his growth to branch out into other categories. It feels like he’s just beginning to tap the surface of what he could do with his chosen material.
6 March 2022
It was February 24, 2020 when Kenneth Ize debuted on the Paris runway. His show caught the world’s attention—acameoby Naomi Campbell can do that for a young designer. Then came the pandemic, which was hard on fashion brands of all sizes. Covid could’ve derailed him, but he was busier than ever. Ize spent the lockdowns developing acapsule collaborationwith the Karl Lagerfeld label, a first for that brand since the passing of its legendary founder. And he also produced two collections of his own.Pieces from those outings have been spotted in the front rows during fashion month. One of his clients said she buys his pieces because the traditional asoke fabric he has handwoven in Nigeria has “the hand-feel of couture.” That feels apropos of his new collection, which includes a handful of evening looks woven with shimmery gold threads, the best being a paneled ankle-length slip dress finished with hip-grazing gilded fringe. “It feels like a new dawn for me,” he said backstage, indicating his optimism about the young people coming up in the wake of the pandemic, who think differently than the generations before.Ize is one of those different thinkers. He’s built a factory in Ilorin, Nigeria, and 80% of his fabrics are woven there, with most finishings done in Italy. Beyond this season’s couture-ish gold dresses, his positivity came through in recolored versions of designs he’s shown in the past. After last season’s more somber palette his striped and checked wovens were eye-opening. Ditto a new lace pattern pant suit, and double ditto the silk knitwear in variegated red, green, light blue, and indigo stripes. His runway bride wore a sleeveless white column in white asoke with gold totems embroidered on its bodice. “It’s the cleanest thing I’ve ever done,” he said. We knew Ize could do exuberant; turns out he can do understated too.
27 September 2021
Since Kenneth Ize’s remarkably buoyant last collection, a lot has changed. It was only weeks after he presented spring 2021 in Paris that Lagos’s EndSARS protests—a youth-led series of peaceful demonstrations against the country’s brutal police squad—broke out across the city, resulting in the deaths of at least 12 unarmed protestors at the hands of Nigerian military at Lekki Toll Gate. “This season was really, really, really a lot,” Ize says. “I went back to Lagos after three weeks spent in Paris and, as soon as I drove through Lekki Toll Gate, I felt this incredibly bad energy. You could still see the burns. People had died. Something had happened in my country which ran so deep.”It sent the designer into a spiral of depression: After months spent navigating the seemingly insurmountable difficulties of last year, he suddenly lost interest in everything, including his work. “But then I realized that work was my way out,” he explains. “So I lost myself in research, until a friend of mine told me that I just had to stop.” By that stage, his moodboard dominant comprised dark colors and serpents, “things I wouldn’t normally look into,” he says, “but I accepted that was where I was at that moment.”The ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail, which has long symbolized the circle of life and death and signified new beginnings—became a printed motif; a sober palette replacing the colorful stripes that have been one of his hallmarks thus far. Theasokefabrics he uses in his designs, typically handwoven in flamboyant contrasts, this time reflected a quieter spirit. Elsewhere, deep brown merino wools, sourced as overstock in Italy, were printed with symbols drawn from Ethiopian body paint: “Africa is one of the neglected parts of the world, but I want to show that we can use our own resources to create fashion,” he said. “This fabric has been abandoned, and I wanted to place my own statement on it.”“I am embracing simplicity, because it comes with the time we are at now,” he continued of the easy silhouettes and drawstring, gently tailored pants. “Everything is still going on. You never know what’s coming with our government. I am super-scared being in Lagos, and I am tired. Everyone is tired. But we are learning that it’s okay to be vulnerable and tell people what is going on for us.
” It’s a heart-wrenching sentiment which almost feels trite to assess aesthetically, but what Ize is doing through his work, imbuing his hybrid vision of Nigerian and European cultures with deeply personal messaging, certainly resonates. And, as the ouroboros shows, out of the darkness comes light. “It’s been challenging,” he repeats. But it’s certainly paid off.
11 March 2021
Last April, sitting in a Lagos café with Kenneth Ize after he’d been awarded designer of the year at African fashion festival Arise, I asked him what he planned to do with the $20,000 check he’d been presented with. He told me that he was going to buy land in Ilorin, the northern Nigerian town where his fabrics are woven, and summarily burst into tears of pride: “I started this brand just three years ago with a GoFundMe page… and I can’t believe it,” he said. “I am just so grateful for all of this. To be able to do this.”Eighteen months later, using the first paycheck he received from his capsule collection for Karl Lagerfeld’s eponymous brand, Ize has built and recently opened a factory on that land. It is where the fabrics for his latest collection have been created (aside from lockdown periods, when his employees worked from their homes), and where new techniques were developed. “Finally, finally, finally!” he beams over Zoom from Paris, where he staged his spring showcase. “We have 30 weavers already—it’s actually the biggest weaving factory in Nigeria.”It is fabric that forms the foundation of the brand Ize has built: by placing the centuries-old traditions of asoke into a modern framework, he is hoping to revive a struggling industry embedded in the history of Nigerian culture. “The only way to preserve and revive those things is not only to start making them again in a very modern way, but also to be forward-thinking,” he says. Accordingly, a gently sculpted fringed tunic dress and flared trousers are further textured through picks in their threads—a new technique developed by one of his employees. “I’ve really got to give it to her,” he laughs. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. She’s been weaving since he was a child, and when she heard what we were doing in Ilorin, she got in touch and told us she’d make us something special.”Elsewhere, “big and juicy” apples have been embroidered upon the fabric by Tyrolean ateliers (having left Nigeria at the age of four to join his father in political exile, Ize was raised and studied fashion in Austria). “The soil in Nigeria doesn’t grow apples,” he smiles. “But I wanted to do something innovative and show a mix of cultures, because that’s what this season is about: community and intimacy.
” Equally, this season he has expanded his offering into silk knitwear bearing his signature stripes; jewelry designed with two of his friends, Nicolo Taliani and Adesuwa Aighewi; and organza shirting printed with painted artwork by Fadekemi Ogunsanya, its concentric spirals made in reference to the seemingly endless chaos of this year.
1 October 2020
Kenneth Ize made his official debut at Paris Fashion Week tonight, though his eponymous label has been making waves on the international circuit for the past few seasons. The Austrian-Nigerian designer was an LVMH prize finalist this past September, having first caught the world’s attention at Lagos Fashion Week a few months prior. Images of Naomi Campbell and Imaan Hammam striding down Ize’s runway in his signature handwoven checks, a traditional Nigerian fabric known asasoke,caused something of a global social media frenzy.Both women were present at the show this evening—Hammam opened, while Campbell closed what was a truly impressive first outing for Ize. The designer is best known for his men’s tailoring, though he kicked things off on a distinctly feminine note with a quilted striped miniskirt and matching funnel-neck zippered jacket. Ize tends to work best in an androgynous zone, however, and his strongest moments were shaped by a workwear influence—think carpenter pants spun from silk and fringed at the hem. Adwoa Aboah looked especially striking in one of his new quilted boilersuits.Ize has been working with a small circle ofasokeweavers in Nigeria with the hopes of preserving the centuries-old craft from the brink of extinction. For fall, he expanded on that commitment to local artisanship by collaborating with Austrian lace-makers in Vienna where he was born and raised. The green and orange lace tunics and suiting were a nod to Ize’s mother, who, like many West African women, would source Viennese lace to make custom outfits for special occasions. The collection was largely inspired by her meticulous approach to Sunday best in particular; the devil was in the details here, with matching fringed bucket bags and clutches made in collaboration with Austrian accessories label Sagan. It’s exquisite transcultural fashion experiments like these that will put Ize and his heirloom-worthy designs on the map.
24 February 2020