September 22, 2020 |
Osman Yousefzada is a polymath. He designs clothes, but he’s also an artist, curator, thinker and writer (his debut novel will come out next year). His new business model reflects that. He focuses on two capsule fashion collections a year and spends the rest of the time on his other projects and collaborations.
His presentation at London Fashion Week showed off his design talents but also his writing skill. He co-authored a poem called Here to Stay with the artist and academic Makayla Ford. It was the mantra of his immigrant father uncle and cousins. They left Pakistan for Birmingham in the 1960s and 1970s and would chant the phrase to fight racism on the streets. His poem, read by Ford, is the soundtrack to his fashion film, shot in Dungeness.
“Here I will stay. Occupying space you said I had no right to,” says Ford as the models – wearing Osman’s signature elegant tailoring – adopt defiant stances. Yousefzada too is defiant. He took nine months off from fashion and is doing things differently with this return collection. “I didn’t want to keep ordering new fabrics. I was looking for a sustainable way of making new clothes. The term I came up with is ‘last yards’,” he says, referring to the deadstock fabric at the end of the bolt which often goes to waste. He’s reduced his number of stockists from 100 to ten. “I don’t want to have a business like that anymore. It doesn’t make sense to me.” He’s found a better way.
