The human body is a lonely house. Skin and bones have their own private and silent language of communication, and on the rare times in which they agree, they both produce emotions that become guests to this house. There is the chattering, and whisperings, and all the muffled sounds of love and pain. But what about trust? What noise does it bring to the house? How does it make itself at home in our bodies? “DO YOU TRUST ME?”??Trust is often a difficult emotion to negotiate. Growing up Nigerian and in the metropolitan city of Lagos, Creative Director Adebayo Oke Lawal, learnt that the best space for trust was in the presence of spirituality, and not entirely in the brackets of domestic affections.
The collection addresses this dilemma: the trust of spirituality, the trust beyond spirituality. The pieces in the Orange Culture SS18 collection are mannered to wrestle with themselves over these concepts, upon their presentation. With some prints holding images of amoebas, Oke Lawal examines distrust as a bacterium that can creep into the human body, but also sees the human ability to trust in someone else, something with an exhaustible heartbeat, as a beautiful and sustaining thing- just like flowers and loud colours.
The pieces in this collection vary, going from soft to hard; the soft ones connoting the positives of trust, the welcoming feeling of security and the surefootedness it allows, and the harder ones tell of its betrayal, its painful deaths, and the hard lessons to learn from it. Oke Lawal infused his own personal interpretations and understanding of trust as a complex human phenomenon through emotive fabrics; things that are reflective, arresting, as well as numbing. Floral, dark shadows, loud colours and unique shapes dominate this collection.
These reoccurring factors chase the many stories through centuries of humans interacting with trust. “Do You Trust Me” is a rhetoric presentation. It is the silent conversation between skin and bones. It is the moment when, after being splintered by trust, they are in conversation with each other, negotiating with each other, unsure if to allow the human body to feel something like that ever again. See the full lookbook in our gallery made in collaboration with Ohiri Studio jewellery, Aga Concept and Moni Morgan.
Photography Courtesy:
Photographer: William Ukoh|Styling / Creative Direction: Daniel Obasi & Adebayo Oke Lawal|Logistics: Precious Ugbe|Prop Design: Aga Concept|Make Up & Grooming: Michael
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