Labrum London (Q4977)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Labrum London is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Labrum London |
Labrum London is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Here in London, fashion’s ongoing love affair with the football world shows no sign of fading. Proof of that came this afternoon courtesy of Labrum, which showed in one of the most impressive locations of the week: The Emirates Stadium, home of the Arsenal Football Club, one of the sport’s true titans. While sitting pitchside, looking out onto stands draped with flags representing the Gunners’ myriad fan bases around the world—Singapore Gooners, Persian Gulf Gunners, and Arsenal Liberia among them—you couldn’t help but be reminded of how football, one of Britain’s greatest cultural institutions, would be a pale imitation of what it is without the contributions of a truly global array of athletes who have migrated to the UK to work.That wasn’t necessarily the intention behind the choice to show here. Foday Dumbuya, Labrum’s creative director, is a lifelong Arsenal fan, and the opportunity to take over one of England’s largest stadiums was a generous progression of the brand’s collaboration with the football club. Indeed, a couple of months back, Labrum was tapped by Arsenal and Adidas, its uniform sponsor, to design the official away kits for the season ahead. Still, there was a poetic resonance with the message at the label’s heart, which was powerfully underscored in a show-prefacing spoken-word performance by British rapper Ghetts. “Designed by an immigrant; defined by resilience,” he said, his words ricocheting in the stadium’s round.“It’s something I’ve been talking about for years, but I wanted to really bring that to life here,” Dumbaya said postshow in the players’ tunnel. “We’re committed to celebrating the beautiful work that immigrants do and that they continue to do in this part of the world.” The collection’s baseline was a synthesis of the expressive, richly textured codes of West African dress (both Dumbuya and his stylist, Ib Kamara, hail from Sierra Leone) with the rigor of British sartorial codes. Tailoring was a strong suit. A double-breasted navy ensemble with a lace-up placket was sported by Declan Rice, one of Arsenal’s star midfielders, along with Labrum’s hefty-soled interpretation of the Adidas Superstar. The standout pieces in the category, though, were the louche lounge suits cut in a heavy-duty fil coupe–esque cloth, with fuzzy cowrie shell motifs in ivory and ochre. Elsewhere, the shells themselves were woven into hoodlike headdresses, invoking their historical function as a currency in precolonial West African societies.
“Labrum is all about educating and bringing these histories to life,” Dumbuya explained of the emblem. “I wanted to highlight the value of diversity and bringing cultures together.”Another key theme explored here was movement. That may sound like a given for a collection presented on a football pitch, but the movement in question was the passage of bodies across borders. That was nodded to by wrap dresses, jumpsuits, and a billowing caftan in a jacquard that reproduced the stamps in Dumbaya’s mother’s old passport, but the most intriguing riffs on the theme were expressed through deft patternmaking. Airy woven shirts, sculptural canvas jackets, and trench coats were crafted with zips at the sleeve, or had sleeves entirely detached and refastened with eyelets pierced by stainless steel rings. Dumbaya’s intention, he explained, was to create pieces that not only transitioned between seasons but places too. “For example, if you’re in West Africa, you’re going to want those sleeves,” he explained, “so you can unzip them for a sense of freedom. It was about trying to find juxtapositions between ways of dressing in the West and in Africa, and finding ways to express them in the same garment.”
16 September 2024
If you can chart a designer’s progress through the scale of their show venues, then Foday Dumbuya is on a trajectory to the top. From Brixton Village to the Four Seasons Hotel and now Tate Britain, where he presented his latest Labrum collection, Dumbuya is as calculated about the backdrop to his collections as he is about using fashion as an educational tool. He chose the Tate, he said, because it’s “an institution” and “the best place to tell a story about the history of migration.”Dumbuya’s oft-repeated mantra of “British tailoring; West African flair” found new focus for fall in a show about borders. “My stories all have the same pattern in terms of migration, craftsmanship,” he said, “but now we felt it was time to celebrate immigrants, what they add to society, the vibrancy they’re bringing to culture.” In the first of a two-part series titled “Designed by an Immigrant,” Dumbuya looked at the clothes people wear to migrate, from the vessels containing bundles of clothing they balance on their heads to the caftans and capes they wrap around their bodies for protection. The British milliner Lucy Barlow had created custom hats woven from raffia to symbolize the pots, while dandyish men sported suitcases covered in the same exuberantly patterned fabrics as their two-piece suits. It was a visually arresting trick. But the suitcases acquired deeper significance for Brits in the audience at a time when a controversial government relocation treaty to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda is dominating the news cycle.Cultural commentary aside, Dumbuya’s skill is in making smart silhouettes feel wearable for a generation that wants to look dapper, but not at the expense of comfort. Here, tailored suits with draped jackets were styled with slouchy pants and adidas sneakers, while bombers were given stiff collars and wide ribbed trims, paired with wide-leg pants. His casting was equally inspired: the England and Saracens rugby player Maro Itoje, whose family emigrated to Britain from Nigeria, opened the show. Not only did Itoje look the part in a collarless suit cross-hatched with a silk print of a British passport and assembled visa stickers, but he also has his own education initiative in Lagos.That ties in with another Labrum mantra: patience. “Labrum is a 50-year plan,” Dumbuya said. “I wanna leave a legacy.
In 50 years [from now] a kid from London or Sierra Leone will pick up something as a reference and think, ‘I look like him, there’s a chance I could be like him—or even be better than him.’ That’s where my mind is—I’m not really interested in the now.”
17 February 2024
Fashion has serious designs on soccer this season. Fresh from the most successful Women’s World Cup of all time, soccer jerseys have been London Fashion Week attire for more than oneVogueeditor; on the streets they’re being paired with tailored pants, denim, and pleated minis. The timing couldn’t have been better, then, for Arsenal legend Ian Wright to make his catwalk debut. The former striker opened the Labrum show in a double-breasted navy suit and what looked like Arsenal’s current third kit shirt underneath, causing this reviewer (and Arsenal season ticket holder) to practically slide off her seat in excitement.Expect nothing less from Foday Dumbuya, Labrum’s thoughtful founder, who followed up his excellent fall show in Brixton Village Market with a gear shift of a location—the ritzy Four Seasons Hotel—and a collection to match. Dumbuya is having something of a smash-hit year. In May, he won the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, a prize presented to him by King Charles III. In August, he collaborated with Guinness on a capsule collection that paid homage to the social tradition he connects with his birthplace, Sierra Leone, of enjoying a pint and a game of checkers. Earlier this month, he was nominated for the New Establishment Menswear Award, a new category at the Fashion Awards 2023.None of the success seems to have gone to his head. On the contrary, Dumbuya insists his goals remain the same as they were when he founded his natty menswear brand in 2014, though he concedes the Queen Elizabeth II Award changed things: “That award took me to a different sphere in terms of how people look at my work and the stories that I tell. That recognition was—I can’t express to you what that felt like. I’ve always talked about legacy. I’ve always said what I’m doing is not just for me. I am not here for the money; I didn’t set up [my brand] for the accolades. I’m here to create a platform for people who look like me.”Meeting his moment, Dumbuya had chosen to stage his spring show around a grand piano under the Art Deco dome of the hotel’s rotunda bar. He enlisted the singer-songwriter Tawiah to perform, accompanied by the classical pianist and composer Karim Kamar (the latter was so moved by the experience that tears streamed down his face during his performance). The front row held the liveliest LFW audience, made up of friends and supporters spanning Radio One DJs, celebrated artists, and musicians.
16 September 2023
After a swift pint at the excellent Chip Shop BXTN on the corner of Coldharbour Lane, this Labrum London show slipped down extra-finely. Foday Dumbuya took us to Brixton Village, a curving arcade of stores that runs parallel to Electric Avenue, at the heart of a neighborhood that has for decades acted as a hub for London’s post-colonial immigrants from the Caribbean and later Africa. Upstairs in a cramped backstage, lined up with the younger models but giving strong fit in a hexagon-jacquard full look, was Kenneth Tharp. He is a former director of The Africa Centre, another hub where many people African and non-African alike have long intersected and gelled in London.The last look of this show encapsulated its story: the jacquard in the suiting was patterned with stamps—including the key Indefinite Leave To Remain—from the old passports of Dumbaya’s father (who came to London fleeing political problems in 1989) and his mother (who followed with Foday and his sister in 1996, once a bridgehead was established). The suitcase represented the leap of faith in between, and the heightened emotional property that is created by cross-continental familial division. Said Dumbuya: “It’s about the conversations he used to have with my mother when he came here. We’d ask: “what is it like where you are in London? What is the weather?” Lucy Barlow created the hats that reflected the bitter cold the freshly arrived feel.A lot of this collection was quite business: there were a series of attractive herringbone suits and plenty of high cut double-breasted jackets with multiple seams lining the sternum lending a vaguely fencing feeling. This might well have been a delicate jab at the Dunhill gig—and why not?—but was also, the designer said, linked to his dad’s determination to stay “immaculately” besuited as he shaped a new life in London. Also compelling were the more informal pieces, including a delicious bomber with arms in mottled leather and body in a richly dark green herringbone, and a varsity jacket with removable stamps and the house logo at the back. “Designed By An Immigrant,” a house statement, was sketched on those stamps and across the ochre soles of the adidas many of the models wore. The quilted pieces were fascinating, connecting the codes of Barbour with the patterns of Dutch Print and true indigenous pattern via some excellent artisanship.
More broadly the fabric developments guided by Dumbuya and executed by his chief French supplier were of an elevated quality.The models started their walk by Esme’s Organic & Herbal Product then headed down the arcade towards Healthy Eater’s Jamaican Cuisine and back again, accompanied all the way by mesmerically awesome sounds from Balimaya Project. These reminded me powerfully of Africa Centre nights in the early 1990s, when it was in Covent Garden, and Jazzie B productions would flow into sets from Mali, Senegal, Kenya, and beyond. Before that, however, Inua Ellams recounted a spoken word storytelling preface entitled “For Greener Pastures”; in it he talked of the struggle “to find soil fertile enough to seed the fruits that we are.” This collection was a flowering of that fight, and a testament to the crucial crucible of Brixton.
19 February 2023
Freedom of Movement—the title of the show by Foday Dumbuya which opened London’s June menswear shows—had resonances which weren’t lost on the assembly who turned out to watch his Labrum collection take to the runway. Born in Sierra Leone, raised in Britain, and a tailoring specialist, Dumbuya is a fashion connector and ambassador between the two countries—he designed the Sierra Leonian Olympic kit and the uniforms for his West African compatriots who’ll be competing in the upcoming Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. This season’s collection mediated on the inspiration and joy he gets from “the idea of a borderless society, where merging of cultures would coexist with constant migration… and to celebrate different cultures living under one roof.”Friends from Freetown, Sierra Leone performed—Freetown Uncut, Drizilik and DJ Rampage—with an extended interpretation of Bob Marley’s Exodus. Lightweight suits came out—green, yellow, pink—some with shorts, others layered with easy matching coats; some with tailored checkerboard patchwork jackets. The headgear—one of the hallmarks of a Labrum look—was made by Lucy Barlow, one of the great London milliners, who began creating towering hats for reggae men out of her shop on Portobello Road decades ago.For all the dandyish swagger and fun of it, there was no mistaking the fact that Dumbuya is pushing back against the tide of British politics—and the plight of migrants in the UK. The weekend’s headlines have been full of Boris Johnson’s highly controversial scheme to forcibly deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. (Meanwhile, UK citizens’ right to freedom of movement through Europe has been cancelled with Brexit.) Labrum isn’t an overtly political label, but Dumbaya left T-shirts on seats which spoke loudly enough. Emblazoned with a pattern symbolizing migrants pushing against borders, they’re a collaboration with Choose Love, the UK charity which supports refugee communities all over the world. At £40, all proceeds go to the charity. A taped outline in the print reads “Designed by an Immigrant.”
11 June 2022
“It’s about paying homage to my roots, but with a nod to the craftsmanship of London,” said Labrum creative director Foday Dumbuya of the inspiration for fall. The designer was influenced by both his West African and British heritages and effortlessly brought together razor-sharp tailoring and a vibrant palette that uplifted the soul. Plus a live choir providing the soundtrack added an ecclesiastical mood to the spectacle.The collection applied a fluidity to precision-cut suits and outerwear. It was titled Poetics of Movement because Dumbaya wanted to make a statement about migration and the feelings of displacement as a refugee. “It’s emotional for me, because people don’t always understand when I talk about culture, so I wanted to convey that experience where moving can feel like culture is being stripped away,” he said. “But in this collection, I found the beauty in my experiences from back home, as well as here in London.”Dumbaya returned to his native city, Freetown of Sierra Leone, to source fabrics from local artisans in delectable shades of canary yellow, vibrant orange, and ocean green. Standout pieces were the coats: One in particular was padded in iridescent black vinyl, while others with oversized lapels featured floral motifs in tangerine applied to gray and black wool. The designer also collaborated with leather goods brand Nosakhari on three new bag shapes: a folio, a crossbody, and an oversized tote.Despite this only being Dumbuya’s second collection on the official London schedule, it’s clear that he is confidently establishing immediately recognizable signatures. A well-deserved standing ovation at the finale of his show made it clear the designer has our attention.
19 February 2022