“It’s about the collapse of society. What I envision people wearing at the end time,” said Mowalola Ogunlesi of her sharp and urgent autumn-winter 2023 collection. 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.” Mowalola‘s fashion dystopia speaks volumes about our society today. But it also offers clothes suited for tumultuous times. The ingeniously-gartered, pants-down jeans and skirt; the crotch-hands shorts, pants, and skirts; the Insert Disc Here dress; 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 and which champions freedom of expression in resistance to systems.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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