3 minute read
WINNIE NEW YORK TRANSVERSES THE GLOBE
Founder Idris Balogun mixes impressive design background with an international perspective.
Idris Balogun’s CV is as diverse as it is extraordinary. The fashion designer got his start on London’s famed Savile Row, becoming an apprentice at the young age of 14 before moving on to design roles under Christopher Bailey at Burberry and Tom Ford for his namesake. Impressive yet vastly different, the professional experiences mirror Balogun’s own international past: growing up in London, spending time in his birthplace of Nigeria, and, eventually moving to New York. Years later, he is still based in Brooklyn, where he designs his own line, Winnie New York, a timeless tailoring brand that is hand-crafted in Vicenza—a picturesque, romantic Italian town about an hour away from Venice—and debuted seasonally in Paris.
“TO TAKE THE RISK WAS THE GREATEST THING I EVER DID. TO ME IT MEANS THE WORLD. NOW, I TAKE A RISK EVERY SINGLE DAY AND I DON’T CARE ANYMORE. I’M LIKE, FUCK IT .”
Admittedly, the decision to step away from the comfort of his renowned employers to pursue his vision in 2018 was a risk for Balogun but it was one that he says he had to take. “You can be the happiest designer, designing for whoever, and being their second hand. But then you only have an inkling in your mind of what your world looks like, what the lifestyle you create looks like,” he explains over coffee in Paris. “I had inklings of it, but I never imagined it would lead to fruition. To take the risk was the greatest thing I ever did. To me it means everything. Now, I take a risk every single day and I don’t care anymore. I’m like, Fuck it.”
With Winnie New York, the world that Balogun eventually did build celebrates heritage and creativity. Materials are central to his process, and the designer’s garments often incorporate the unexpected, including upcycled denim, hand pleated vintage silk, and small crop linen freshly harvested from the ground and made into fiber. Not least due to its production in Italy, Winnie New York reflects Balogun’s international stimuli, incorporating cues from local New York street style with formal European construction along with travels to Senegal and his own Nigerian heritage. To commemorate her legacy, the label shares its name with its founder’s late grandmother, who passed a year before its inception. “She was a huge supporter of my career,” Balogun says. “Being a child of Nigerian immigrants, [your family] wants you to have job security, to not have to hustle and struggle the way that they did. I wanted to work in fashion, and my grandmother told me to do it. She championed me throughout my career and I really wanted to make her proud.”
Earlier this summer, Winnie New York returned to Paris after COVID-19 travel restrictions ceased to compete in LVMH’s famous fashion competition. And, following special acclaim, Balogun stayed a few days after to present his Spring/Summer 2023 collection for the week of menswear. “Within a year and a half, we went from having sewing machines in people’s houses to winning the Karl Lagerfeld Prize and being on the Paris Fashion Week calendar,” he laughs. “It’s so crazy to think about. It taught me that anything is possible. It also taught me to stay focused, keep your eye on the ball, and just keep going.”
Risk has indeed remained a creative force for the designer. “To do a show without people, without mannequins, without any anatomical structure, without any idea of clothing being worn—just throwing it out there—was risky,” Balogun explains of the fashion presentation. The clothing he showed reflected the designer’s past training as classic silhouettes were given new leases on life. Like always, materiality was strong, particularly a silk cotton blend and his small crop linen, which were used for casual pieces like T-shirts and cargo pants as well as in more formal suiting and shirts. But perhaps the clearest example of Balogun’s vision of reworking traditional pieces was a leather jacket that took its detailing from the tailoring world. “You have to imagine it, you have to appreciate the details, appreciate the fabric, look at the garments as individuals, not as a look,” he continues. “Clothes are individuals as well, they come from life: sheep was sheared for that wool, a plant was grown and picked into that cotton, flax was remade into that linen. It comes from life and then it’s made into this garment, so I think it deserves respect to be an individual as well.”
This manifestation of a garment from raw material speaks to another theme that many creatives face: transformation. “I’m not who I was yesterday. Who I was 10 years ago is not who I am now,” Balogun reflects. “Designers think about creation so much, but I think it’s a three part thing: It’s about learning, it’s about creating, and it’s about destroying. It’s a cycle. When you design you need to think about all the aspects. You have to learn these different mediums. Nobody is born and just starts creating stuff.”