{"id":176433289,"date":"2014-03-05T00:59:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T06:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/?p=176433289"},"modified":"2014-03-05T00:59:04","modified_gmt":"2014-03-05T06:59:04","slug":"fashion-maki-oh-flygeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/2014\/03\/05\/fashion-maki-oh-flygeria\/","title":{"rendered":"FASHION: Maki Oh: Flygeria"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fader\"<\/a><\/p>\n

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013
\n\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

Maki Oh: Flygeria<\/span><\/strong><\/h1>\n
STORY BY:\u00a0MOBOLAJI DAWODU<\/span><\/a> , PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMUAL JAMES<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Investigating the essence of Nigerian swagger, and why Maki Oh is the Lagos designer you need to know<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

From the magazine<\/em>:\u00a0ISSUE 87<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0June\/July 2013<\/em><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Mobolaji Dawodu is FADER\u2019s style editor at large, regularly heading out with a couple of suitcases to style fashion stories all over planet earth. He\u2019s kind of our on-staff fashion diplomat, criss-crossing the globe to find the world\u2019s best style and bringing it home. His perspective on fashion stems in part from his childhood, when he split his time between Nigeria and the States, and he\u2019s got an instinct for knowing what makes clothes special and beautiful no matter where they come from. He\u2019s long endorsed his compatriot Amaka Osakwe, creative director of the Lagos-based womenswear brand Maki Oh, as a kindred spirit. Here, Dawodu speaks on how her ladylike designs embody the look and feel of Nigeria today, and why the world should be paying attention. \u2014 EMILIE FRIEDLANDER<\/span><\/p>\n
\"Maki\u2019s<\/a>

Maki\u2019s sketchbooks, filled with drawings for her next collection.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Mobolaji Dawodu:<\/strong>\u00a0Maki Oh is a fly womenswear line from Lagos, the largest city in Nigeria. There are a lot of people making really beautiful clothes out of Lagos right now, but Maki is the one who really gets me thinking about Nigerian style, that unique Nigerian swagger.\u00a0My dad\u2019s Nigerian and my mom\u2019s American. My parents moved to Nigeria in the \u201970s, and when they wanted to have me, they came back to the States, and then I went back to Nigeria when I was five weeks old! I stayed until I was 10. But I would say you can\u2019t think about Nigeria without style\u2014Lagos in particular, which is where I grew up. It\u2019s a mega-city. The way Nigerian culture is, it\u2019s very proud. The way people talk, the way people dress, the way people bargain for what they want, the way people charm\u2014it\u2019s all very stylish. It\u2019s the hustle, it\u2019s the charm\u2014everything in Nigeria is an art form. There is no separation between art and life. Life is art.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Maki<\/a>

Maki working with fabric in her Lagos apartment. For many fabrics, she uses a dye process known as adire, traditional to the Yoruba ethnic group. This ancient process, which is gradually fading away from villages across Yorubaland, is one of the ways that Maki combines the new and the old in her work.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Walking down the street in Lagos, there are a lot of African prints, a lot of woven fabrics, long skirts, head-ties. It\u2019s everything from Western attire to traditional attire. That\u2019s the amazing thing: there\u2019s no set rules about who\u2019s going to wear traditional clothes. It doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re rich, it doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re poor; everyone wears everything. There are so many influences from so many walks of life. Maki draws from the traditional stuff, because that\u2019s where it started, but she\u2019s mixing it up. Her clothes are beautiful and elegant and could be from anywhere, just like a lot of ensembles you see when you\u2019re walking around in Lagos today.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
Nigerians are always waiting for a chance to dress up. Nigerian culture is big on celebrations, and Lagos especially is a big party scene. Weddings are huge, funerals are huge\u2014parties are a huge part of my first memories. I mean partying till daytime, with streets blocked off. Part of it is showing off\u2014showing off your wealth, showing off your outfits. If you go to a Nigerian event, a lot of times you\u2019ll know who\u2019s there together, who\u2019s related. At my grandfather\u2019s funeral, the women all wore the same outfit, the same elaborate head-ties, which are called geles. And the guys, we wore hats that matched their head-ties. Weddings\u2014the family of the bride wears one color, the family of the groom wears another. It\u2019s a celebration of where you come from, like, Oh, over there\u2019s the Dawodu Family; Oh, that\u2019s the Thomases. Any older woman, any family you go to, has a room that\u2019s full of fabrics and they can tell you which fabrics came from which events. I have four aunts, and they all got married. My grandmother has so many different fabrics. She\u2019ll be like, This is from so-and-so\u2019s wedding, this is from cousin so-and-so\u2019s funeral. She can look at the fabric and tell you the event, the year, what happened\u2014all of that.\u00a0When I was growing up, my mom actually started a clothing business, and sort of like Maki Oh, she specialized in Western-style clothes with African patterns. For my whole life, for the last 30 years, my mom has worn her own clothes, and both of my parents are quite stylish. My grandfather didn\u2019t always wear traditional clothes, but for events, it was all crisp white, without fail. My family always had great taste. I just styled for a film that went to Sundance, called Mother of George, and the opening scene is a big wedding scene. Basically, that scene was me putting the beginning of my life into my work. I just made costumes based on what I remembered as a kid. I used some of my mom\u2019s fabric in the film, and she\u2019s like, Oh that\u2019s from so-and-so\u2019s wedding. Style is like, such a big, big deal.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\u201cTHE WAY NIGERIAN CULTURE IS, IT\u2019S VERY PROUD. THE WAY PEOPLE TALK, THE WAY PEOPLE DRESS, THE WAY PEOPLE BARGAIN FOR WHAT THEY WANT, THE WAY PEOPLE CHARM\u2014IT\u2019S ALL VERY STYLISH.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\"Nike<\/a>

Nike Okundaye\u2014or Mama Nike, as she is known\u2014is a major custodian of the Yoruba arts, including the adire dye process. As a mentor to Maki, she lets the designer consult the museum of rare African textiles at Nike Art, the gallery she owns.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

\nMaki\u2019s work stands out because she uses fabrics in Africa that aren\u2019t the norm. Nowadays, everybody is doing a lot of beautiful designs with African prints, or ankara\u2014like the Turkish capital. But the fabrics that Maki uses are more obscure. When you see an African print, you look at it and you\u2019re like, Oh that\u2019s an African print, but what she uses, when you look at it, it\u2019s not just about Africa. It\u2019s a mesh of many influences. A lot of ankara fabrics are actually imported from Holland these days; the prints that Maki uses will be hand-painted and stitched in Nigeria, but they\u2019ll be a play on those traditional designs and the stories they tell, like a dress that\u2019s covered in eyes, or fish, or a very contemporary-looking abstract design. That\u2019s what people find interesting about her. You can\u2019t place it so fast and so quickly.\u00a0When I think about Nigeria and style, when I think about women and Nigeria, I think about femininity. African woman are very feminine, and the femininity of Maki\u2019s clothing\u2014as much as it\u2019s different from a lot of things you see in her country\u2014is what connects it very much for me to Nigeria. Femininity is about an attitude and a way you carry yourself. Nigerian women don\u2019t reveal as much as people reveal in the West. It\u2019s a lot more covered up and just sexy; it\u2019s traditional clothing and traditional fabrics and long skirts\u2014like mermaid skirts.<\/span><\/p>\n
\"This<\/a>

This top and skirt look was handpainted and hand dyed with indigo with the adire technique. The print on the skirt is a traditional Yoruba motif called gangan, which translates to \u201ctalking drum,\u201d a Yoruba instrument made from goat\u2019s hide and played as a means to pass messages from village to village.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Maki thinks a lot about the female form; she plays with the contrast between covering and revealing. One of her first pieces that got a lot of attention was a hand-sewn, calabash mosaic long-sleeved top that reproduced the shaded contours of the nude female chest in graphic form. More often, it\u2019s about combining opaque fabrics with more sheer materials, about highlighting the shape of the body without directly showing much skin, or showing little glimpses of it in unexpected places. She definitely has contemporaries from Nigeria doing beautiful clothes, a lot of wonderful things, but I think she\u2019s toned it down a bit. I think that\u2019s why we gravitate toward her: it\u2019s not so out-there, it\u2019s not so bold, it\u2019s not so obvious. It\u2019s a little more subtle and understated. There\u2019s just something effortless about her style, the way her clothes flow, just in the shapes. She has one of those lines where the person wearing the clothes makes the clothes. There\u2019s a lot of room to be that woman, so to speak, the Maki Oh woman. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

>via:\u00a0http:\/\/www.thefader.com\/2013\/09\/12\/maki-oh-flygeria\/#\/0<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013 Maki Oh: Flygeria STORY BY:\u00a0MOBOLAJI DAWODU , PHOTOGRAPHY: SAMUAL JAMES   Investigating the essence of Nigerian swagger, and why Maki Oh is the Lagos designer you need to know From the magazine:\u00a0ISSUE 87,\u00a0June\/July 2013\u00a0Mobolaji Dawodu is FADER\u2019s style editor at large, regularly heading out with a couple of suitcases to style fashion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[6],"tags":[4,12,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176433289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176433289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176433289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176433298,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176433289\/revisions\/176433298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176433289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176433289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176433289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}