The Time Traveller

A TRUE ORIGINAL AND MAVERICK, DESIGNER BUBU OGISI WEAVES TOGETHER AFRICA’S PAST AND PRESENT IN A CAPTIVATING TALE FOR THE FUTURE

BUBU OGISI IS AN ARTIST. Not in the cynical, click-baity definition of our age of disposability; but one where the need to absorb and create runs marrow-deep. An artist who drinks in her craft and its milieu, always hungry to reach further and deeper, her curiosity never sated. Self-assured and deeply intellectual, Bubu travels through life with a keen eye for meaningful stories and the layers of history and tradition behind them. In this way, the Nigerian designer, stylist and creative director seeks to reawaken not only the diverse craftsmanship of the continent, but also the multifaceted identities that underpin it. Her chosen medium is fashion – a canny choice that deftly straddles the commercial and creative worlds. Material without having to be materialistic, fashion lets Bubu wear her soul on her skin. “What I wear has always been important to me because my outfit is the first impression or presentation of myself,” she says. “Dressing up is a spiritual process for me. I take it seriously. My work has a lot to do with spirituality and how we express ourselves through our beliefs, and how this affects our choice of dress. How we present ourselves in this world is important to me.”

Bubu has been enthralled by fashion and fabric ever since her mother took her along on one of her trips. “My mom is obsessed with fabric,” she shares. “When it’s a birthday or Christmas, she always gives fabric as a gift.” Today, the designer, who was raised in Lagos and London and studied fashion at Esmod in Paris, traverses Africa in search of the hand-made crafts that help make up the rich tapestry of the continent. These ancient artisanal skills are undoubtedly the driving force behind her womenswear brand, IAMISIGO, which she established in 2013, with bases in Lagos, Nairobi and Accra. She and a team of artisans create deeply personal and unique pieces celebrating and reimagining these crafts, which often run the dual risks of being forgotten and being taken for granted. Witness her loop-weave pieces, made in Kenya using hemp and cotton, or her infinitely versatile and original shirt dresses – pieces that not only play with textile use, but also broaden the possibilities of what “African fashion” can be. Her travels across Africa are about fabric research, yes, but also fabric preservation, “and how those techniques and processes can be interpreted for the future with new eco-innovative design,” she asserts. Bubu researches and finds communities with trades that might slowly be dying from an influx of fast fashion and faster globalisation, and tries to figure out eco-conscious and creative ways to revive them. This is a latent benefit of tracing and preserving age-old handicrafts: the unearthing and reimagination of materials – tree bark, flax, palm, recyclables – that could help make fashion more ecologically friendly. She even collaborated with artisans in Kenya who crochet and weave recycled plastic with silk, cotton and hemp to create dresses, tunics and tops, while another collection featured pieces made from raffia and recycled cotton. Complex, innovative and colourful fabrics for a complex, innovative and colourful artist –and continent.

“Ogisi absolutely excels at the fine balancing act that has defined the global success of so many African designers: manipulating the hallmarks of the contemporary to sustain and elevate the traditional,” comments creative content yourluxury.africa yourluxury.africa consultant and writer of the newsletter African Fashion Weekly, Modupe Oloruntoba. “IAMISIGO memorialises timeless elements of West African spirituality by weaving the thrumming energy of our current moment into them, and does so with ingenious consideration, both for the local environment and the people with whom she shares this cultural capital. It's work that expands the perceived borders of African creativity for the global mind, but more importantly, helps its heir resurface, embrace and celebrate their inheritance.”

Bubu’s unconventional work has drawn much international acclaim. She has shown at fashion weeks in London, Paris, Lagos, Durban and Bogotá and is part of the blockbuster Africa Fashion exhibition, showcasing at the V&A Museum in London until 16 April. The exhibition celebrates the creativity and global impact of contemporary African fashion, with South African designers Thebe Magugu and Sindiso Khumalo also participating.

For her part, Bubu is showing her IAMISIGO SS19 collection, Gods of the Wilderness, which references ancient West African masquerade costumes. Drawing inspiration from the region’s rich heritage of abstract performance art, her work comments on the various forms of identity created by different cultures and its resonance today. At the root of it all lies her quest for storytelling – stories about ourselves and about the creators of generations of craftsmanship.

“We are able to tell long-lasting stories through fabrics and fibres, stories about how people lived. You can sometimes read these stories in books, but it’s much more interesting to look at the fabric and understand how it was made entirely by hand – without a single machine. Who came up with this idea, and how? How did the personalities of these different people and cultures integrate and interweave into the piece of work? What is the historical folklore behind these techniques?” What always surprises her – from the men weaving intricate designs in West Africa to the women in East Africa with their more minimal patterns – is the time these processes take. “A lot of people don’t understand the amount of time it takes to create a garment or fabric,” she says. “For me, it’s important to preserve works of hand, because the hand is truly at the forefront of creativity. It’s incredible to see how people have been able to master that.”

These are stories not often told and, more pertinently, they are stories that Bubu is not telling for a Western audience. It is for Africa and Africans that she weaves her colourful tales. She wants to reframe the discourse as well as leave a legacy of African ingenuity; one that doesn’t “Africanise” western ideas but instead ushers in a new era of African design, with our resourcefulness and artistry at the core. ■