When Black Sherif joined the virtual call, his earpiece was already plugged in. By the time we spoke, he had released Sun Sherif Vol. 1, a six-track project accompanied by sunflowers and a handwritten note. When I told him the note felt personal, he agreed. “Yeah, it was very personal. I did the writing myself.”

Born Ismail Sherif and raised in Konongo Zongo, somewhere within Ghana’s Ashanti Region, Black Sherif started making music in his final year of high school in 2019. Since then, he has used music to document his life, dreams and fantasies, describing his approach in terms of melodies, rhythms and frequency.

Music and fashion have always been closely connected for Black Sherif. He spoke about dressing with the familiarity of someone describing an interest he had long before music became his career, tracing it back to childhood, when he was old enough to choose his own clothes without his mother’s help. His appearances at London Fashion Week with Labrum and his Paris Fashion Week debut with Off-White reflect an interest that has been there from the beginning. “It's been with me,” he said. “With some unconscious intentionalities and consistencies.”

Even if he had never made music, he explained, dressing would still have been a hobby he paid close attention to. His interest in clothes was tied to his relationship with music, from listening to records to following the artists whose work he admired, long before he became an artist himself.

‍Sun Sherif Vol. 1 follows Iron Boy, an earlier project marked by a darker, more deliberate intensity. When I asked what had changed between the two, Black Sherif described the new EP in a way that stayed with me. “I won't say Sun Sherif is less deeper. I think it's the same as deep, but it's softly deep.” He spoke about approaching life with aggression as an experiment, a response to what he had experienced, and then wondering what it would mean to try the opposite. Sun Sherif Vol. 1 came out of that curiosity, allowing him to explore softness without abandoning the depth that has characterised his music.

The six-track release was also a deliberate choice of format. Black Sherif was clear that he considered it an EP, not an album, and the idea had been on his mind for years. “Somewhere 2020, I tweeted that I wanted to make one of the best R&B projects I'd heard,” he said. “And for some reason, unintentionally, I just did it this year.” His albums have typically run to thirteen to fifteen tracks, but this time he wanted a shorter project that could hold a particular experience without extending beyond it. The result is a more concentrated expression of what he had been exploring, delivered across six songs.

Jolie is the EP’s most devoted song, and the one Black Sherif chose as his personal favourite. When I asked how he writes with such vulnerability without revealing too much, he said, “I just write every single piece of mind. It's really just unfiltered. It's really just raw. Sometimes I'm not even intentional about being deep or vulnerable. That's just what comes out of me.” The feeling begins without much filtering, but the finished song still has to be shaped. Through ad libs, harmonies and the arrangement itself, he gives those thoughts a form that other people can sit with.

As Black Sherif’s music has connected with young people in Ghana and across the diaspora, the expectations around what he makes have grown. I asked how he manages that pressure without letting it dictate his work. He spoke about continuing to pursue the things he dreams of and envisions, even when the pressure affects him personally. “For some reason, the vision remains untouched,” he said. “And I can't explain that.” His answer suggested a distinction between the pressure he feels and the direction he wants to take. He returned to this idea of holding on to his own convictions while remaining open to other perspectives. “I do not believe there is one truth,” he said. “There are many truths. And even though I believe in mine and I stand firm in mine, I still make room for other truths.”

Sun Sherif Vol. 1 is the beginning of a larger project. Its sequel is coming, followed by an album, he notes, and he has more visuals planned, including two additional videos before the year ends. He also spoke about returning to the UK, a possible Zama Disco appearance and a trip to Lagos in the first quarter of next year. He has been spending time in the city writing, making music and taking care of himself, with the studio remaining a constant through it all.

Before we ended, I told him that Love Again was my favourite song on the EP, although I kept returning to Sacrifice from Iron Boy, particularly the way he sings the chorus. I couldn't quite explain what it was about the delivery that stayed with me. “The delivery,” he said. Then, warmly, “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

Cover Credit: Black Sherif 

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The P-square's split has been a large part of the conversation in the Afrobeats industry after it was announced in 2017. Before they became known as Mr P (Peter) and Rudeboy (Paul), P-square was a trailblazer duo who released five studio albums and performed at several sold-out concerts across Nigeria and abroad. 

Released in 2007, their third album, Game Over, is honest and a wee political. It reflects their inspiration of international acts like Micheal Jackson, Bobby Brown, and MC Hammer. The album weaves multiple romantic scenarios in the almost hour-long time sequence. One of P-square's biggest marketing values is their performance and Game Over was developed with visuals at its centre. The album had a music video for almost all the songs and this contributed to redefining African music videos for a modern audience. Game Over borrowed musical elements from RnB, hip-hop, and reggae. It is definitely one of their strongest works. 

The album comprises 10 songs. No One Like You opens the record, setting the tone for the romantic sojourn that defines it. Lyrics like, ‘You're the highest/When it comes to rating, you're the lead and No one be like you/Say they cannot replace you, 'cause you are a blessing,’ show the brothers confessing their undying adoration to their lover. The video of this track is almost crossing 70 million views and the song was sampled by Ugandan Reggae duo, Radio and Weasel, for their song Zuena in 2010. 

The title track of the album, Game Over, takes an angsty turn from the loving No One Like You as it explores a relationship on the brink of destruction. The mood of the album picks up in Do Me, a track that would definitely get you moving. The song features vocals from fellow Afro-pop star, Waje. Waje later claimed to not get paid for her vocals on the song. No formal contract was, apparently, signed to protect her copyright rights. This exposes the industry's shortcomings of failing to protect up and rising vocal talents through the right contractual agreements. The song's music video won many awards including Sound City Music Video Awards, Nigerian Music Video Awards, among others. 

Track number 4, Miss You Die, takes a somber detour on longing and romantic regrets. It's one of the songs that shows the group's singing capabilities. Why E Be Say reflects the struggles of the average Nigerian in 2007 but the sentiments that were addressed in the song still rings true for many Nigerians today. ‘In our society make we dey try to live like one family/What a tragedy with our wealth we still dey live in poverty/The wrong thing be said/As poor ones dey hala the rich ones dey hammer yes o.’ These lyrics expertly put the devastating class divide in Nigeria in a language that every Nigerian relates to. It's a tragedy for a nation rich in resources to be experiencing so much financial insecurity. 

More Than A Friend is another track with ambitious romantic storytelling. Am I Still That Special Man? sees P-square questioning a lover's infidelity over mellow RnB instrumentals. Ifunaya follows the same lyrical motives as No One Like You. Stand Up revisits the political instabilities of 2007, eight years after military rule. P-square is nostalgic about the great times of Nigeria and they encourage the common man to Stand Up to the corrupt government. Human Rights Watch published a paper on the 11th of October 2007, detailing Nigeria's worsening political crisis. They wrote that, "Violence, corruption and impunity are not just problems that the government has failed to tackle; they are systemic abuses that flow from the heart of the very same government institutions that should be working to combat them." 

The last track before the outro is Roll It. This is a club track and the lyrics doesn't deny it as P-square sings about admiring a girl dancing in the club. The album got a reissue with two remix tracks; Temptation and Bizzy Body. Both of those tracks featured Alaye and Weird MC respectively. Game Over is one of the timeless bodies of work from an African act, the album has more than 30 million streams on Spotify and is reported to have sold "nearly 8 million copies across Africa and the world." according to Native Magazine. 

Game Over gave us some of the most unforgettable hits of the 2000s. The singing and dancing twin duo released music under their records, Square Records but they have signed multiple record deals with labels, Akon's Konvict Records, Universal Music South Africa and Square Root Entertainment. P-square played a pivotal role in shaping Africa's music and entertainment landscape and as a duo, they've won multiple albums that crossed the continent. BET Awards, MTV Europe Music Awards, MOBO Awards, MTV Africa Music Awards and a couple more. 

Their single career paths as Mr P and Rude Boy continue to play an influence in Afro-pop. Mr P went on to create his record label, P-Classic Records and his 16-track album saw features from his peers in the industry, Tiwa Savage, Simi, Wande Coal,  and more. He won Best International Male Artist at the International Achievement Recognition Awards in 2018, his first award as a soloist. Rudeboy also founded his own label, Fire Department Inc. and he released his album Rudykillus in 2021. The video of one of his bonus tracks, Reason With Me has crossed 300 million views on YouTube. 

We might never get a P-square reunion after Peter's update on the group earlier this year. The update showed the audience how deep the familial disputes ran between the two brothers. Jude Okoye, their elder brother who was at the forefront of P-square's management, received criticism from Peter. 

He accused his two brothers (Paul and Jude) of mistreatment and harassment in the group regarding finances, management and a strong betrayal of their brotherhood. It was the nail on the coffin of P-square's future and it was a disappointment to fans who believed in their reunion. Paul and Jude are yet to issue an official response to his allegations. P-square's career might be over but their Afro-pop legacy is going to remain forever carved in stone. 

Cover Credit via Life And Times Magazine

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Rachel Ojuromi Makes Her Chanel Runway Debut in Paris

From recreating Matthieu Blazy’s Chanel looks on the streets of Lagos to walking for the French fashion house in Paris, Rachel Ojuromi’s latest fashion moment feels particularly full circle.

Rachel Ojuromi has made her Chanel runway debut.

The Nigerian model and creative appeared on the runway in Paris for Chanel under creative director Matthieu Blazy, marking another major step in a rise that has increasingly captured fashion’s attention.

But Ojuromi’s relationship with Blazy’s Chanel makes the moment more interesting than another major runway booking.

From Lagos to Chanel

Earlier this year, Ojuromi began attracting international attention through a series of fashion videos shot around Lagos. Rather than waiting for fashion’s traditional institutions to give her a platform, she made the city her runway styling, documenting and interpreting fashion through her own perspective.

One of those moments saw Ojuromi recreate looks from Chanel’s Métiers d’Art collection using clothes she already owned.

It wasn’t simply an imitation of what had appeared on the runway. Chanel was filtered through Ojuromi’s world: different clothes, a different city and a distinctly personal approach to styling.

The videos travelled.

So did her name.

Ojuromi’s work caught the attention of fashion audiences internationally and, importantly, Matthieu Blazy himself.

Rachel Ojuromi Had Already Named Chanel as a Dream

Ojuromi has been open about her admiration for Blazy and his work.

In the months before her Chanel runway appearance, she spoke about the designer as one of her major fashion inspirations and named Chanel among the houses she dreamed of working with.

Then the distance between reference and reality suddenly became very small.

The designer whose work she had been interpreting from Lagos cast her in Chanel.

For Ojuromi, it creates the kind of fashion story that is difficult to manufacture: a young creative engaging with a house from thousands of miles away, being noticed by the person behind it, and eventually becoming part of the runway herself.

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More Than a Viral Fashion Moment

It would be easy to frame Ojuromi’s Chanel debut as the culmination of a viral moment.

It is probably more interesting to see it as the continuation of one.

Ojuromi has built much of her identity around making the process visible. Her fashion content doesn’t begin when she reaches Paris or gets access to designer clothes. The limitations, experimentation, references and environment around her are part of the work.

That philosophy also sits behind The Process Africa, the platform Ojuromi created to spotlight emerging African creatives while they are still becoming — rather than waiting until international recognition makes their stories worth telling.

Her Chanel appearance now gives that idea another meaning.

Fashion has historically operated through a relatively predictable sequence: institutions identify talent, give it visibility and audiences discover it afterwards.

Ojuromi’s trajectory points towards something different.

She developed the language publicly. The audience arrived. Fashion noticed.

And then came Chanel.

Rachel Ojuromi’s Next Chapter

A Chanel runway debut will inevitably bring a new level of attention to Rachel Ojuromi, but perhaps the most compelling part of her story is what happens next.

The Lagos streets that once functioned as her runway have now led to one of fashion’s most recognisable houses.

Yet the significance isn’t that Chanel suddenly made Rachel Ojuromi interesting.

It’s that she had already built a world interesting enough for Chanel to notice.

From Lagos to Paris, the process continues.

Before there was DJ Six7even, there was David Etuk the petroleum engineering student carrying a first-class average through year three, holding two scholarships at once, interning at ExxonMobil, doing the maths and the physics not because he had to, but because he loved it. "I actually loved studying petroleum engineering," he says, without a trace of the irony you'd expect from someone who walked away from it entirely. "I loved the academic work. I loved maths. Physics was my best subject."

DJ Six7even didn't leave engineering because he burned out or lost interest. He left because something else pulled harder. "I would only do what I love, go where I love, be with who I love," he says. The degree wasn't a mistake he's since corrected. It was proof of a mind that finishes what it starts, redirected toward a different structure entirely.

His latest status description, DJ executive, sounds like branding until you trace it back to where it actually comes from. An engineer thinks in systems, load-bearing structures, resource management, how to build something that holds together under pressure. Six7even didn't set that instinct down when he left school. He picked up a different material to build with.

From Haircut to Holding Company

The name itself started as nothing. During a session in his hair stylist's chair, his hair curled up into an unexpected shape, and a random passerby commented that it looked like a pineapple. It stuck the way nicknames do, randomly, permanently, without his input. "My height, I didn't choose it," he says of the other half of the equation, the six-foot-something frame that makes him impossible to miss in any room he enters. "I had to make peace with it."

What he's done since is the part worth paying attention to. In 2026, "Pineapple" stopped being something that happened to him and became something he built. His Pineapple Head Collective is not a merch line or a vanity project, it's a structure, DJs at the center, intertwined with music releases, live events, merchandise, and a pipeline for spotting the next generation of talent coming out of Africa. "It's about building an actual, intertwined, functioning system," he explains, "with DJs in the centre of it."

That word, system, is doing a lot of work. It's the engineer talking. Somewhere between the classroom and the club, he stopped seeing the DJ and the executive as two separate jobs competing for the same hours, and started designing an ecosystem where both roles function without collapsing into each other.

"You know how to manage resources, outsource jobs, network," he says of the mindset he's now building into the collective from day one, rather than learning it the hard way, years into a career, the way he had to.

Even his one unprompted digression, a stray fact about how nearly everything in modern life traces back to oil and gas, reads less like a tangent and more like a signature. The engineering never left. It just became the invisible infrastructure underneath a nightlife brand.

The Sunset Mix
Not a sunset clause.

Six7even has always treated music as something built to bring people into the same room, not just something played at them. That instinct is at the center of the Sunset Mix, a set built around daylight instead of darkness, played between 6 and 7, the same hours baked into his own name. It's less a gimmick than a return to something specific, the daytime energy he's long been associated with, stripped of the usual nightlife trappings and built instead around sun, open air, and Amapiano.

"Amapiano just hits differently when the sun is out," he says, and he's not being poetic about it. It's practically the whole thesis behind the Sunset Mix.

It's a small detail, but it says something larger about how he thinks about his own brand, that "Six7even" was never just a stage name to begin with. It was always a blueprint waiting to be used, the same instinct that turned a haircut into a holding company, now turning a number into a format.

Becoming Six7even

None of the pipeline from David to Six7Even happened overnight. In the summer of 2018, before any of the cities, before the name meant anything, he was sleeping in his car between club trials, doing sets he knew were good, and then waiting on calls that didn't come. "That was the last time I felt unseen, to be honest with you," he says. He kept going anyway, and his breakout moment happened. 

Being seen, it turns out, comes with its own kind of isolation. He describes standing in the middle of a set, 3,000 people losing themselves to the music, and finding himself somewhere else entirely for five full seconds, present in body, gone in mind. "I felt like I was alone in a space of three thousand people," he says. The one constant through both the invisible years and the sold-out ones has been the same friend, Judy, checking in on the person underneath the name on the flyer, not the performance. "Are you okay to play this gig," he recalls her asking, a question almost no one else thinks to ask a man everyone assumes has it all figured out.

The Quest for Stardom 

Ask him what success used to look like, and he'll tell you it used to be smaller and more local, being the biggest nightlife DJ in Lagos, running multiple clubs a night. That version of the dream has been replaced, not abandoned, but outgrown. "The dream got bigger," he says. "It changed to be the biggest DJ export out of Africa."

Underneath the ambition sits a simpler operating principle: being human is the only qualification he requires from anyone, regardless of class or status, and making people happy is what makes the work worth doing. It's a mature worldview from someone whose public image still trades heavily on height and a haircut.

The ‘Hair’ Line

For someone whose entire image trades on being larger than life, literally, he's surprisingly precise about where the boundaries sit. "There's a line," he says, talking about the industry, the crowd, the version of himself that shows up under the lights. "You can dance on it, moonwalk on it, twerk on it. But don't cross it."

It's a small piece of philosophy, delivered almost in passing, but it says more about his longevity than anything about the height or the haircut ever could. He's not interested in shock value or chaos for its own sake, he's interested in range, how far you can push a moment, how much personality you can bring to it, without losing the thing that makes people trust you in the first place. Dance on the line all night. Just don't cross it.

It's the same instinct that shows up in how he talks about people generally, off the decks entirely. Status, class, none of it moves the needle for him. "The fact that you are human already qualifies you as a higher animal," he says, "not just any other animal." Respect isn't earned through who you know or where you're from, it's the baseline, extending the moment two people's paths cross. Making people happy, he says plainly, is what makes him happy.

Put together, it's a quieter kind of maturity than the one the industry usually rewards, less about restraint for its own sake, more about knowing exactly where your own line is, and never needing anyone to remind you where it was.

Strip away the nickname, the stature, the crowd, and what's left is not a mystery, he's already told you. A first-class engineering student who chose sound as his medium and never stopped thinking like a systems builder.

A haircut that became a holding company. A kid who slept in his car in 2018, still building, still executing, still proving to himself that what you genuinely love can be taken all the way to the biggest stages in the world.

Cover Credit; Tomi O'nezer

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The first thing  SPACESHIP Billy, said when the call connected was “suffering and smiling.” He laughed after saying it, setting the tone for a conversation that moved easily between serious reflection and humour. Nigerian-born and London-raised, Billy has spent the last ten years as the official disc jockey for Burna Boy, working alongside the artist through the growth of his career. His role within that world, however, extends well beyond the turntables. 

For Spaceship Billy, being Burna Boy’s official DJ involves more than selecting music for live performances. As he explained, “There's so many conversations that happen in the background.” He hears music before it is released and gives feedback on what he thinks will connect with different audiences, drawing on his own instincts and experience. Within the Spaceship Collective, he said, his opinion carries the same weight as other members of the team. “It's not seen as, oh, this person's just a DJ,” he said. “Everybody's input is taken on and it's seen as equal.” After ten years working alongside Burna Boy, Billy has become part of the wider creative process, contributing to decisions that extend beyond what happens on stage.

Over the past ten years, Billy has watched the stages grow from small clubs to stadiums, with each setting demanding a different approach. He pointed to the differences between New York and Atlanta, and between Toronto and Montreal, where the French influence can change the atmosphere of a room. Playing for a global audience, he explained, means recognising the cultures within it, even when the crowd has come to see the same artist. “You have to understand that although it's one artist and it's one vision, there's different kinds of cultures that you have to try and communicate with.” Years of touring with Burna Boy have given him experience adapting to those differences from one city to the next.

‍Method Man

Billy’s approach to production also depends on listening closely and being willing to change his mind. He described starting with drums, building the melody around them and removing anything that does not serve the track. Sometimes, he returns to a piece days later and hears it differently. “I might listen to the track one day, come back to it again and be like, nah, actually I don't like that bit,” he said. “Or I might have heard something somewhere else which has inspired the way I kind of feel about it again on another day.” What he hears outside the studio can change how he approaches a track when he returns to it, leaving room for new ideas to influence the production as it develops.

Afrobeats’ global rise is often discussed through its performance on Western charts, streaming numbers and international collaborations. Spaceship Billy offered a perspective shaped by growing up with the music long before that wider recognition. “Afrobeats has always been big in its own circles,” he said. During his university years, artists such as P-Square, Tony Tetuila, Magic System, Premier Gaou and Wizkid were already part of his listening, alongside the Fuji music his parents brought from Nigeria to London. “We were listening to Fuji music. I was even listening to Sunny Ade through my mum and dad.” His recollection speaks to a musical culture that was already thriving within the communities around him, even as its international profile continued to grow. When I pointed out that he had answered two of my questions at once, he replied, “Double whammy,” and laughed.

Before he became Spaceship Billy, he was known as Bill Gates -- the DJ name he used in his early career sojourn -- he had built a reputation in his own scene before working with Burna Boy. It made the question of being identified primarily through his association with Burna Boy particularly interesting. When I asked whether it bothered him, he considered both sides. After ten years working with someone, he explained, the association is natural, much like being identified with the company you work for. At the same time, he had his own ambitions long before the partnership. “I was always a DJ in my own entity before Burna Boy. I was always kind of having that vision for myself.” He also sees the association as something to be proud of. “If they say you're Burna Boy's DJ, it's not a negative stance. I think it's more of an identification to greatness.”

Outside his work as a DJ and producer, Billy is involved in event management and the IT operations of the Spaceship Collective, alongside making time for the gym and his family. “It's not just deck one, deck two,” he said. “There's a business side aspect that I'm a part of.” Looking ahead, he wants to spend more time producing music and encouraging younger people to take education seriously alongside their creative ambitions. He sees understanding technology as especially important, warning that without knowing how things work, young people risk missing opportunities. “Things are going to go past you,” he said. “So I think that for me, something that I would like to kind of inspire in the younger generation.”

Over ten years with Burna Boy and the Spaceship Collective, Spaceship Billy has built a role that extends beyond the decks, contributing to creative decisions, production and the business behind the music while continuing to develop his own ambitions. He opened our conversation with “suffering and smiling,” a phrase that stayed with us as we moved between the serious and the funny, the work people see and the work that happens in the background.

Cover Credit: Spaceship Billy

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By blending the soul of R&B with the rhythm and freedom of bouyon, Fallon is creating a sound that’s deeply personal, proudly Caribbean, and entirely her own.

Some artists spend years searching for a sound that feels entirely their own. For Fallon, that journey led her back to her roots. Instead of chasing trends, she found inspiration in the music and culture that shaped her, creating a sound that’s as personal as it is powerful.

Blending the emotion and intimacy of R&B with the infectious rhythms of bouyon, Fallon is carving out a space that feels both contemporary and deeply connected to Caribbean culture. Rather than chasing trends or following a formula, her music is guided by instinct, an honest reflection of who she is and where she comes from.

As bouyon continues to gain long-overdue international recognition, Fallon sees an opportunity not only to introduce audiences to the genre, but to celebrate the culture that shaped her. For her, this isn’t simply about creating music; it’s about carrying a heritage forward while building a new artistic identity.

With a new era on the horizon, Deeds sat down with Fallon to discuss identity, the evolution of bouyon, and why authenticity remains at the centre of everything she creates.

Linda for Deeds: Welcome to Deeds. For those discovering you for the first time, who is Fallon?

My name is Fallon. I’m a singer, and my music lives somewhere between R&B and bouyon. That’s the world I’m trying to create, one where emotion, rhythm and my Caribbean roots all come together naturally.

Your music feels like a meeting point between two different worlds. How would you describe your musical universe?

My universe is really an experience before anything else. It comes from my love of singing R&B, but also from rhythm, energy and movement. At the same time, I wanted to pay tribute to my Caribbean culture through bouyon. Bringing those two worlds together felt completely natural to me because they’re both part of who I am.

My music is where R&B meets my Caribbean identity.

For people who may be hearing about bouyon for the first time, how would you explain it?

Bouyon is a genre that was born in Dominica before spreading throughout the Caribbean. It’s energetic, hybrid and constantly evolving because it mixes so many different influences. What I love most about it is that its essence is freedom. There are very few limits to what you can create with it.

What does bouyon represent to you personally, and to Caribbean culture more broadly?

It’s much more than a genre of music. It’s a cultural movement. Bouyon is about expressing yourself freely, embracing rhythm and energy without holding back. For Caribbean people, it’s part of our identity, and I think that’s what makes it so powerful.

Bouyon is freedom. It’s a way of expressing who we are without limits.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen bouyon reach audiences far beyond the Caribbean. How do you feel watching that evolution?

Honestly, I never thought it would grow this much. Especially when you remember that in mainland France during the 2010s, bouyon wasn’t always well understood or appreciated. Seeing it finally reach new audiences and receive more recognition is something really special. It shows that people are becoming more open to discovering different cultures and sounds.

Are there artists who’ve had a major influence on your own sound?

Not really. I listen to a lot of music, of course, but I don’t try to recreate what someone else has already done. My goal has always been to build something instinctive and personal, something that people immediately recognise as mine.

‍ Is there an artist you’d love to collaborate with one day?

Hamza. (Laughs.) I think our universes could complement each other really well.

Is there one song that best represents who you are today?

I’d say “Normal.” That’s the track where the balance between R&B and bouyon feels the most natural. It’s also the song people connect with the most, which tells me that they understand the direction I’m trying to take artistically.

‍ Where do you see yourself, and your music, in the next five years?

I see myself becoming even more confident in who I am. I want to be more aligned with myself and more transparent in what I create. As an artist, my goal is to keep evolving while staying honest. The more I grow, the more I want my music to reflect who I really am.

Finally, what would you like to say to everyone who’s been supporting you?

First of all, thank you. It means everything to know people are following this journey. I want everyone to know that I’m coming back different. This is a new era for me, with new music and new singles that really represent the artist I’ve become. I can’t wait for people to hear what’s coming next.

Rather than forcing two genres together, Fallon allows R&B and bouyon to exist in conversation with one another. The result is music that feels deeply personal while remaining rooted in Caribbean culture. As bouyon continues to reach new audiences around the world, artists like Fallon are expanding its future by embracing, rather than diluting, the traditions that shaped them. If this new era is any indication, Fallon is only beginning to discover the full potential of her voice.

Credits: 

Artist: Fallon @quiestfallon

Photographer: frederic magalhaes @fredericmagalhaes_ 

Creative Director/ Stylist: Linda Benro @styliddie 

Photo assist: Noé Lalanne Bernagozzi

Art direction & Assistant Stylist: Elliot Morpuss @elliotmorpuss 

Assistant Stylist: Ilayda Gul @ilayda_gul24

Videographer: Marvyn Ngikila @marvyn_07

Production: Sylva Mobali @mobaliprod

Interview: Linda Benro @styliddie

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Tattoos have become one of the most popular forms of body modification among young people. Yet they are far from a Gen Z phenomenon. Tattooing has existed for thousands of years across cultures in Japan, Polynesia and numerous African communities, including those in Nigeria, Mozambique and Tanzania. These permanent designs are created by inserting ink and pigments into the dermis, the skin’s deeper layer.

In Nigeria, permanent body markings have long appeared across different cultures. Among Yoruba communities, facial markings and scarification historically signalled lineage and identity, while other forms of body marking across the country have conveyed courage, beauty or spiritual protection.

Tattoo artist Emmanuel Item describes his style as “West African Tribalwork” and treats his art “like a living archive.” He spoke at length about Africa’s tattoo heritage, noting that it was not originally practised simply for fashion or style.

“Back then, our grandparents used to carry different styles of tattoos, which were lost [...] around our parents’ generation,” he explained. “In the old times, tattoos and scarification had healing purposes. They were used to protect the wearer spiritually or show someone’s identity and tribe.”

The fashionable business of tattoos 

Tattoo imagery is no stranger to the fashion world. In 2014, one of Maison Martin Margiela’s couture pieces featured an intricately embroidered top based on the work of tattoo legend Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins. One of America’s most influential tattoo artists, Collins helped define the American traditional tattoo style.

Tattooing has also had notable runway moments in Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring/Summer 1994 Les Tatouages collection and Rodarte’s Spring 2010 show.

For Ola, a 24-year-old Nigerian artist whose personal style is heavily inspired by gothic and alternative culture, tattoos are both fashionable and political. “Sometimes, tattoos go beyond fashion because they’re permanent and deeply personal. There’s a personal connection and ownership of oneself involved in deciding what you want to permanently put on your body.”

Ola has two tattoos, one of which was designed by her boyfriend. She has since attached sentimental meaning to the tattoo and the memory of having it inked.

Many of the tattoo artists we spoke with see a direct link between tattoos and personal style. It is unsurprising that tattoos appear across fashion subcultures such as hippie and alt-goth. Both Inked by Shallz and Emmanuel agree that tattoos can function as accessories to a person’s style.

Bizzyaski Tattoos offered a more cautionary view: “Five years back, people didn’t care about the meaning of tattoos; they just wanted anything they liked on their bodies. I always give advice on what a client wants to put on their body, regardless of their personal style, because it is something that will be part of them for the rest of their life. So, it must have great meaning.”

One of the most intriguing aspects of the connection between tattoos and personal style is the symbolism behind the designs and the styles to which people are drawn. Emmanuel Item runs ỌJI HUB, a studio in Vienna—ọjị means kola nut in Igbo—and believes clients need to find the right tattooist to express themselves fully.

He never repeats a tattoo, and his work contains extensive cultural symbolism. According to him, most of his clients want to “express their connection to their ancestral roots on the African continent, often through symbolic elements from their cultures.”

He has also observed the effect of tattoo trends on personal style: “You will see a certain ‘trashy’ adaptation of ’90s tribal tattoos, now called cybersigilism, that became super popular during my years living in Berlin.”

The cyclical nature of fashion trends and the permanence of tattoos create an intriguing style contradiction. Bizzyaski Tattoos noted that popular design preferences often differ by gender. His male clients mostly favour religious imagery such as praying hands, Jesus and crucifixes, while his female clients are drawn to flowers, phoenixes and butterflies.

Inked by Shallz says her clients “are drawn towards tattoos that have personal meaning, mostly names, dates or symbols that remind them of people they love or stories that mean a lot to them.”

Tattoos and the society

Across ancient Egypt and parts of Southeast Asia, tattooing has at different times carried spiritual, religious or protective meanings. Today, some evangelical Christians interpret biblical teachings as prohibiting tattoos, while many Sunni Islamic scholars consider permanent tattoos as haram. Christianity and Islam are Nigeria’s predominant religions, and these beliefs continue to shape public perceptions of tattoos.

Where, then, is the line between self-expression and socioreligious expectations? The #EndSARS protests of October 2020 brought wider attention to the harassment faced by young Nigerians whose appearance was considered alternative. Such profiling has led to arrests, detention and, in graver cases, deaths. The protests exposed abuses by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad and led to its official disbandment.

Although SARS has officially been disbanded, the stigma remains: tattoos are still frequently viewed as rebellious or immature in Nigeria. I wondered how much room fashion leaves for self-expression when society places limitations on that expression.

Ola’s response was simple: “F***k it all.

“Part of existing authentically is being willing to sit with the discomfort that other people might have about the way you choose to exist. I’m aware that negative views exist, but they don’t determine what I put on my body. I’m very attached to my identity, and other people’s perceptions cannot take that away from me.”

Since she began tattooing in 2023, Inked by Shallz has witnessed clients being harassed or questioned by the authorities because of their tattoos. 

“I’ve had several incidents where clients came back to cover up tattoos of birds I had done for them earlier, not because they didn’t like them, but because they had been harassed by police officers who accused them of belonging to a certain cult associated with birds. Another client came to cover up the number 777 because some cultists threatened to cut off his hand if he kept the tattoo.”

She added that tattoos are increasingly being viewed through a less rebellious lens. Some clients are becoming comfortable with visible placements, while others now bring their parents to tattoo appointments. These, she said, are some of her favourite sessions.

Mofe, a visual artist from Lagos, rarely encounters trouble from members of the public or the authorities, partly because of the size and placement of his tattoos. Tunta, who has 12 tattoos, sometimes highlights “certain tattoos or makes them more visible.” Societal expectations, however, do not affect her tattoo choices.

For her, “Getting tattoos makes me feel like my body is mine, and I can do whatever I like with it.”

Emmanuel attributes many of the negative stereotypes surrounding tattoos in Nigeria and across much of Africa to colonialism. 

“Colonialism, religion and certain individuals spread pseudoscience about tattoos,” he said. “This created a negative stigma that has become deeply embedded in cultures around the world.”

He nevertheless believes young people can give tattoos a more positive image in society.

Bizzyaski Tattoos operates studios in Nigeria and New York, and he noted little difference between how tattoos are received by his clients at home and abroad. 

Speaking about the police stereotyping tattooed people as criminals, Bizzyaski said that when clients do not know their rights as Nigerians, societal pressure can heavily influence the tattoo styles they choose.

Tattoos in fashion: A hit or a miss?

The answer to “Are tattoos fashionable?” is complicated because tattoos are deeply subjective. Different people get them for different reasons.

Mofe believes tattoos can be fashionable. He explained it through an interior-design metaphor—a telling choice, given his work in production design: “It’s like a plain wall versus a mural wall. It can make a person more visually interesting.”

Inked by Shallz insists that tattoos do not exist separately from fashion: “Fashion isn’t just about what you put on your body but also how you present your body. Tattoos can completely change how a look comes together. They can be the main statement or they can feel delicate, like an accessory.”

Ola believes tattoos contribute to her style, while Tunta says they are not necessarily central to hers.

Tattoos exist on a subjective plane, inviting different opinions into the conversation. Yet reducing them to a debate about whether they are stylish sweeps their culturally rich history under the rug. Tattooing has existed for thousands of years. Like other forms of visual art, it transcends fashion and style.

Cover Credits: unorthodox reviews via Instagram 

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Teledalase appears in a blue-and-purple patterned headwrap tied high around her head, gold hoop earrings and a gold-toned necklace over a simple black top. Her makeup is understated, with a matte lip, two nose piercings and a pair of small matching pieces sitting together beneath her lower lip. Framed photographs and artwork fill the space behind her. The whole room felt like a memory, a piece of her occupying the entire space. 

As she speaks about her music, she becomes increasingly animated, moving between ideas about culture, language, grief and artistic freedom with the kind of enthusiasm that makes it clear she has spent a lot of time thinking about what she wants her work to say. When asked to introduce herself and her music, she does not reach for a genre or a career summary; she reaches for water. “I would describe my music as water,” she says. “There are many ways that water can exist and be. I can be as deep and vast as the ocean, and then I can still be what you need on a hot day. I can be as redeeming and as refreshing as you going to the river on a hot day to take a bath. It is what it is in whatever context or structure that you meet it, and however you find it is however it's supposed to be.” 

The comparison makes sense when you look across Teledalase’s work. Her music moves between Yoruba culture, personal experience, folk traditions and contemporary sounds without settling into one fixed identity. She is Nigerian-American, with an artistic lineage that runs deep into Yoruba culture. Her father was a visual artist, her mother a dancer and theatre practitioner whose dance troupe, Omitsun, gave Teledalase early access to live cultural performance, and her paternal grandfather was a founding member of the Mbari Mbayo Club & Oshogbo Art movement. That inheritance has shaped the way she understands music and language. Yoruba was not simply a language she grew up speaking. She described it as a language capable of expressing things that English could not, particularly through its proverbs and emotional textures, and connected the renewed use of Yoruba in contemporary Nigerian music to a much older tradition carried by artists like King Sunny Ade and Ebenezer Obey.

Her 2024 debut EP, The ones who didn't die, Pt. 1, introduced that foundation to a wider audience. Her contribution to Netflix’s Aníkúlápó: Rise of the Spectre placed her work within a larger Yoruba cultural and spiritual world, while Apple Music named her an Africa Rising artist in 2025. Then came The Bad Wife Has No Tongue, in 2026, a deeply personal project that some listeners could have read as a departure from the work that came before it. Teledalase does not see it that way because, for her, there has never been one fixed version of what her music is supposed to sound like.

“I am just making music,” she says, when asked whether she sees her projects as parts of one larger creative world. “I am so anti-branding — which is very weird because in the music industry nowadays, we're all being pushed to create a brand of some sort. If I have something to say, I'm going to say it in music. The Bad Wife Has No Tongue is a deeply personal project. It doesn't mean I'm going to do a second one. Maybe the next album would be about me being in love, and people will be like, what the hell? Where did this come from?” That unpredictability has followed her through the catalogue. After the Aníkúlápó soundtrack, she released Peace, a song she had written years earlier and which existed in a very different register from the music people had started associating with her. Listeners who had begun to categorise her as a Yoruba artist were unsettled by the shift. Teledalase was not.

“If there's one thing about me, you cannot put me in a box. Life is too short for me to turn myself into this one-dimensional person. Everybody else can package it for you. That is their choice. But because I don't have eternity, I'm going to have fun with music.” For Teledalase, that freedom also comes from a belief that music should have room for subjects that do not always fit into commercial Afrobeats. She spoke about folk music as a space for grief, labour, contradiction and the less polished parts of everyday life. She referenced Taste of Life as an example of a song addressing subjects unlikely to become club hits but still worth documenting. She also spoke about music as political resistance and about existence itself as an act of resistance for Nigerians and Black people living within systems that place limits on what they can become.

“Being Nigerian or Black means dreaming beyond limits despite what the system puts in front of you,” she says. “Music like ‘Shungu’ embodies that - a resilience and an unshakeable spirit.”

That understanding of music has also been shaped by grief. Her father’s death interrupted the creative process she had been building. The EP The Blue Child had explored their relationship while he was alive, but after his death, she found herself unable to return to that material in the same way. Grief, she explained, was still too blurry to turn into music. “Grief must unfold naturally before it can be captured in music. I'm not ready yet.”

The tree that appears throughout her work, and most explicitly in SANGO, IGI NLA, her September 2026 single drawing on Yoruba mythology and the symbolism of the thunder tree, offers another way of understanding that patience. She described Iginla as a female spirit representing “unbreakable persistence” and spoke about finding whatever keeps you grounded, whether that is family, faith, music or community, and holding onto it. The idea of rootedness sits alongside the movement in her music. SANGO, IGI NLA reaches into Yoruba mythology and ancestral reverence, using traditional percussion, chants and an invocation-like vocal delivery, while the rest of her catalogue refuses to remain in one musical or emotional space. The two things are not contradictory for Teledalase. Being rooted does not require staying still.

She pointed to Rema as an artist she respects for the same reason. “Because he has the audacity sometimes to just go against the grain, and those are my people,” she says. What interests her is not unpredictability as a marketing strategy, but the freedom to follow an instinct even when the audience does not know what to expect next. “Today they love you, tomorrow they don't,” she says. “That is not a currency I am willing to bank on. When I take my last breath, I don't want to say at least I gave people what they wanted. I want to leave a legacy that I designed - not based on what people told me to do.”

For someone who describes her music as water, the refusal to stay in one shape is perhaps the most consistent thing about her work. The projects can change, the languages can change, the subjects can change, and the sound can move somewhere listeners were not expecting. What remains is the freedom to follow the next thing that feels worth making.

Credit: Teledalase

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At Diesel’s Summer/Spring 2027 show in Milan, guests sat along a runway surrounded by scaffolding, red light and thick white smoke being pushed through the room by industrial fans. Sitting among them were 200 performers from the Marseille-based artist collective (LA) HORDE, dressed like everyone else and waiting quietly for their cue. For a while, there was no way to tell who had come to watch the show and who had come to become part of it.

Diesel was founded, in 1978, by Renzo Rosso as a denim brand for people who did not want to dress like everyone else. Its history has always been tied to the idea that clothes can shape how people behave, not simply how they look. The advertising campaigns of the 1990s were rarely only about the jeans. They sold a way of life around them, built on irreverence, sex and self-expression. When Glenn Martens arrived in 2020, the brand had been without a creative director since 2017 and was trying to reconnect with the cultural relevance it had once had. His task was not simply to redesign the clothes. It was to give Diesel a reason to be looked at again. 

Martens did that by giving every season its own event logic -- a rather sensual one at that.  The Autumn/Winter 23 show distributed 200,000 boxes of Durex condoms to guests. Show invitations arrived shaped like butt plugs. Giant inflatable figures rode each other on runways. Rihanna wore Diesel. Michelle Obama wore Diesel. Martens rebuilt the brand around the same ideas Rosso had established, using desire, humour and self-expression to make each collection's presentation feel like part of a larger world. The shows became events in themselves, and the events helped define what Diesel was trying to say.

The SS27 collection is deconstructed and deliberately imperfect. Denim is permanently creased with resin, while extra-long jeans are cut with varied slits at the ends. There are cutaways and trompe l'oeil details, alongside club-ready pieces designed for bodies in motion. Martens described the collection as capturing the morning-after feeling, when you wake up in what you wore the night before and decide that it is fine, that it is actually the point. The clothes are not presented as pristine objects removed from everyday life. They look worn, lived-in and slightly undone, as though the night has already happened.

Midway through the show, the (LA) HORDE performers began to react. Headbanging. Kissing. Making out. Moaning. Some put their fingers to their throats. The actions became increasingly sensual and strange as the show progressed, spreading through the seated audience as the room became harder to read. The soundtrack escalated alongside them, tense and electronic at the opening before fragments of Donna Summer's Love to Love You Baby began surfacing underneath the mix. By the time the performance reached its peak, the people in the room could no longer easily tell who was part of the show and who was simply watching it. The boundary between performer and guest had dissolved, and the runway was no longer the only place where the show was happening.

Gigi Goode walked the runway. Kim Petras and ATEEZ's Yunho watched from the audience. The Donna Summer record played underneath everything, getting louder as the room became stranger. Martens said backstage: "Every season we try to do something unexpected. This one was a bit more experimental." 

After six years of making Diesel presentations increasingly difficult to separate from the culture around them, his final collection did not need another spectacle outside the clothes. It brought the spectacle into the audience.

Fashion farewells are usually more solemn. There are retrospectives, archival looks and a designer taking a final bow in front of the industry that watched them work. Martens gave Diesel something else. He gave it one more night that felt like the brand he had spent six years rebuilding: loud, sensual, playful and slightly uncomfortable. The clothes came out creased. The audience became part of the performance. By the end, it was difficult to say exactly when the fashion show had ended and the party had begun. That was perhaps the clearest expression of what Martens built at Diesel. He made the clothes and the world around them feel inseparable, and for his final show, he left that world running until there was nothing left to do but walk out.

Cover Credit: Luca Bruno

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Art, Identity and the Myriad Worlds of Martha B. Cole 

In Dakar, the multi-hyphenate artist, Martha B. Cole moves through her different worlds with surprising ease. Besides modelling, photography, and creative media productions, she also spends part of her life in the humanitarian sector. While her background is in Political Science and International Relations, much of her story has unfolded through images.

Modeling came first, although almost accidentally. One day, a photographer had found her through social media and invited her to take part in a shoot. One project became another, and the experience slowly opened her up to the larger machinery around image-making: casting, creative direction, photography and production. Somewhere along the way, she became interested in what happens on the other side of the camera too.

Ever since, Martha has shown she understands what it means to be looked at, but she is also learning how to look. Photography gives her control over the frame. Humanitarian work has pushed her attention towards lives and experiences that could, hitherto, have easily been overlooked.  

Against Dakar — from its sunny streets, euphoric salons, to its taxis, public transport and coastline — these different versions of Martha exist at once. Catching up with Deeds, Martha talks about learning to appreciate her body through modeling, finding photography, the responsibility that comes with representation and why she no longer feels any need to choose only one version of herself.

How did you first get into modeling?

I actually started through social media because I had always wanted to create content. A photographer, who is now a good friend, reached out about a shoot he had conceptualised. He shared the creative direction with me and asked me to be part of it. I said yes.

That first shoot unexpectedly opened the door to modeling. I loved the experience, and I honestly didn’t expect to receive such positive feedback or have so many opportunities come from it.

What does modeling mean to you now compared to when you started?

When I started, I mostly thought, “I’m pretty, I can be in front of the camera.” Now I see modeling as a form of self-expression and collaboration.

I don’t see myself as just the person standing in front of a camera anymore. I’m embodying somebody else’s perspective or artistic vision. I especially enjoy being involved in the creative process and having conversations with the team about the concept.

Has modeling changed the way you see yourself?

Absolutely. I used to feel very uncomfortable with my body, especially being skinny. I spent a lot of time wishing I looked different.

Modeling allowed me to see myself through another lens. I started appreciating my body, my hair and some of the features I once struggled to accept. Seeing myself represented in different ways through the work has helped me embrace those things more.

When people see Martha the model, what do you think they miss?

I think people often see the physical appearance first. Sometimes there is this assumption that being considered beautiful tells people everything they need to know about you.

What they can miss is the person behind it — someone who thinks, creates, questions things and has her own perspective. I really value working with people who take the time to know me beyond what they see.

I’ve also never liked the idea of “beauty and brains,” because it almost sounds like the two things are somehow unusual together.

What made you want to pick up a camera yourself?

I was working on a project as part of the casting team, and it ended up being one of the most beautiful creative experiences I’ve had. It was a four-day project, and being so deeply involved in everything made me curious about the other side of the lens.

I wanted to understand what it felt like to create the frame myself.

What do you find yourself photographing?

I love portraits, especially staged portraits.

I like creating an entire setting, giving the model a character or atmosphere, then allowing them to play with their expressions and emotions. I’m interested in creating a world around the person rather than simply taking their picture.

Does being a model affect the way you photograph other people?

A lot. It makes me more conscious of how I communicate with whoever is in front of me.

I know how important it is to feel comfortable, understood and guided when someone is photographing you. Modeling has also taught me to pay attention to facial expressions and body language. Sometimes I can sense what somebody is struggling to express because I’ve been in that position myself.

I know what it feels like to be looked at, so when I’m behind the camera I try to make the person feel seen rather than simply observed.

Do you prefer being in front of the camera or behind it?

I genuinely can’t choose.

Being in front of the camera allows me to embody somebody else’s vision. Being behind it allows me to build the vision myself. They satisfy completely different parts of me.

Do you think of yourself as a photographer, model or creative?

I struggled for a long time with trying to put myself into one box.

Now I’ve stopped feeling like I need to choose. I see myself as a creative. Modeling, photography and art direction are simply different ways for me to express that creativity.

What does Dakar give you creatively?

Dakar is my inspiration.

It’s not only the culture. It’s the atmosphere, the pace of life, the people you encounter and the way everyday life unfolds around you.

There is also a rhythm here that can be difficult to fully explain with words. You have to see the way people move, the contrast between old and new, the light at certain times of the day and all these small interactions happening in the streets.

How did humanitarian work enter your life?

It actually started through a creative project in a remote area of Senegal.

During a lunch break, I started talking to some of the people living there, and they explained how small forms of support could sometimes make a real difference in their everyday lives. They also told me about volunteers who would come and provide basic necessities.

I became curious. I started researching ways I could support them beyond that one project, and eventually I began volunteering. That experience made me want to understand humanitarian work more deeply.

What has that work taught you about people?

It has taught me how easily we can overlook people and realities that are around us.

Sometimes we make assumptions about people in vulnerable situations without really understanding what it means to live without certain privileges. The work has made me more curious and more willing to question what I think I already know.

It has also made me look beyond what is immediately visible.

Fashion and humanitarian work sound like very different worlds. Do they ever connect for you?

What is interesting is that I discovered humanitarian work through a creative project, so they were connected from the beginning in a strange way.

At first, they seemed like completely different worlds, but I’ve realised they are both deeply connected to people, stories and how we choose to look at them. Both have taught me the importance of listening and being intentional about the stories we tell.

Has humanitarian work changed how you think about representation?

Definitely.

It made me realise that art doesn’t only have to exist to be beautiful. It can question things. It can be a tool for archives. It can connect people and communicate something.

Representation comes with responsibility. We should be conscious of whose stories we choose to tell, how we tell them and whether the people being represented are actually given space to speak for themselves.

To truly see someone is more than noticing them. It means recognising their dignity, complexity and individuality.

And when we choose to represent people through art or storytelling, I think the responsibility is to make sure they are not simply being looked at, but genuinely seen.

Credits:

Photography & Creative Direction: Folajimi Emmanuel @folajimy

Styling: Martha B  @juste_martha @mouslykb

Face @juste_martha

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Long before The Polygamist became a 22-episode Netflix series in 2026, there was a young girl, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, cutting pictures out of magazines and writing stories around them. 

Today, Sukoluhle (Sue) Nyathi needs no introduction. The Zimbabwean-born South African writer has spent more than a decade turning the complicated terrain of women, relationships, migration, family and identity into stories that refuse to sit quietly on the page. 

At 13, she wrote her first novel, Crazy Over You, inspired by the American comic-drama series Sweet Valley High. She would eventually study finance, build a career in investment and economic development, write a relationship column for the Sunday Mail, work in television and publish the novels that would establish her as one of Zimbabwe's distinctive contemporary voices. She always kept the pen close. 

That persistence is perhaps most visible in The Polygamist, which Nyathi self-published in 2012 after being rejected by traditional publishers. Fourteen years later, its Netflix adaptation has not only introduced the story to audiences far beyond its Southern African origins, but also amplified interest in Nyathi's wider body of work. Netflix reports that the series reached No. 1 in 21 countries, entered the Top 10 in 62 and helped triple sales of the original book.

But it is only one part of the conversation. Across her other titles The Gold Diggers, A Family Affair, An Angel's Demise and When Secrets Become Stories, Nyathi repeatedly returns to people negotiating the space between who society expects them to be and who they are trying to become. She writes about women, power, migration, family, violence and survival, but beneath it all is a fascination with what happens when people begin to question the lives they have been handed.

Now, with the world listening at a much larger scale, Nyathi is still doing what she has always done: telling stories. Deeds turns the page with the prolific scribe, looking beyond the Netflix success to the writing life that came before it.

Stanley for Deeds: For readers discovering you through The Polygamist and Netflix, there is a whole Sue Nyathi story that predates both. You were writing from childhood, studied finance, built a career in economic development, wrote a relationship column, and eventually became a novelist and screenwriter. Looking back, where was the writer in you hiding in plain sight?

She wasn't hiding. She was always there, even as a child. I always say I used to tell stories even during my playtime. I used to cut out pictures from magazines and write stories around them. I had already shown that inclination for telling stories from a young age. I was just discouraged from pursuing it because our parents at the time didn't want us to pursue professions that they wouldn't consider respectable. They wanted you to be a doctor, an accountant, or a lawyer. 

I remember my dad would have his notes from work, and they'd be typed out. And sometimes when he discarded those scripts, I would always write my stories at the back. I would use those papers to write because I just wrote anywhere I could find paper. So that's why I say it was always there, and they knew it. But yeah, it was just not encouraged. 

You've described writing as an escape from the “drudgery of economic shop talk and financial markets.” You also spent years writing manuscripts that weren't published, including A Family Affair. What kept you writing when there was so little external evidence that the world was waiting for your work?

It was just the love for it. I loved doing it. Even when I was pretty bad at it, if I look at some of my earlier work, there was nothing there that said, "Oh wow, this is our next Shakespeare." It was just the love to tell stories and entertain people. And then I think because of the nature that my career took, none of it ever sort of invited or exposed that creativity. So as a result, I think I was just yearning to tell stories, so it just became an outlet.

The Polygamist was self-published in 2012 after rejection from traditional publishers, and fourteen years later it's become a global Netflix phenomenon. Do you think the audience found the book late, or finally caught up with it?

I think the way the world is structured, they found it late, but I don't blame them because oftentimes when you're published in Southern Africa, books don't travel upwards. They are sold downwards. 

So an African writer that's published overseas in America or the UK, you are more likely to find their work in Africa because it's easier then to sell it down. But it doesn't really work the other way around. So you'll find that a lot of writers will go undiscovered, unnoticed. 

And so I think for me, what this series has done is just to amplify my body of work and market it in a way that I would never have been able to do so, on my own or even with the publisher here. It's given me that kind of visibility that most writers yearn for. 

The book specifically came from observing a kind of ‘modern polygamy’ in Harare, where men maintain parallel relationships while presenting themselves as monogamous. Has your understanding of that phenomenon changed in the 14 years since you wrote the book, particularly as conversations around toxic masculinity, emotional manipulation, and women's agency overall have evolved? 

It hasn't changed, and I think it also is kind of validated by people's responses because the book came out in 2012, and people either agreed with some of the observations or they say it's happening. It resonated with them, which means it must be true for a lot of people, even though it may be untrue for a few.

So it means it really hasn't changed from what I observed back then, which is quite sad in a way because we would like to actually say we've evolved, but we haven't. It just actually shows that society is not evolving. We are regressing and degenerating because that's not what we want to see when we look at ourselves. So that's actually quite sad. 

There's a moment when Matipa reflects, “I felt like I was getting a preview into my future if I remained in Jonasi’s life.” She ultimately decides she still has a “fighting chance” and walks away. What did you want readers to understand about the moment a woman begins to choose herself? 

That we have agency, and you can decide to exercise it for your good. And I know there's a lot of harsh judgment on Matipa. A lot of women say she left her kids behind. But how many men leave their kids behind? She didn't leave them with strangers; she left them with their father. Men do it all the time, but you never hear people saying, "He left his kids." 

But for women, and I saw a lot of that, that's a double standard where we've been conditioned to say it's the same crime, but somehow when a woman does it, some go as far as women are thrown in jail for that, whereas men can leave. They leave every day. 

But just to demonstrate that she chose herself, and that sometimes you have to, and she saved herself because the violence would have only escalated. So that women's agency. 

Those themes seem to run through much of your work. A Family Affair explores marriage, religion and respectability, while When Secrets Become Stories gives women space to speak about gender-based violence. Do you think you've become increasingly interested in what women are permitted to be versus what they actually want to be?

It's a bit of a catch-22, in the sense that we have what we aspire to be, and then we have what we really are. And the two are very different. 

And I see it across not just unclassed rural or urban women. It cuts across the divide. Even the women who are empowered, educated, still suffer gender-based violence, the same way that the rural, uneducated women do. So for me, one just has a voice about it, but might not necessarily act on it. And just for me, it's like, these are two things: what we aspire to be as women and what we really are.

Speaking about your migration to South Africa in 2008, and The Gold Diggers follows the Zimbabweans making that same journey. Did migration change the way you understood both Zimbabwe and South Africa – and your own identity as an African writer?

Not necessarily. It just makes you question things, right? So if you grow up in one country, there's almost like a national psyche or collective way of thinking, of viewing things. And sometimes it takes you when you remove yourself from that environment. You can actually interrogate what you've grown up around and actually start to question: is this really okay or is it not? 

And then you compare with the country you're in, and then there's certain things that you may like from them that you don't find in yours. And you sort of compare and contrast. And then you actually find that there are also similarities. You know, you might be in a different country, but the mindsets are almost the same. 

So I think it just opens you up in one way than you would be if you, I think if you write in one place, you just become defined largely by that place. Unless you're writing historical stuff. But I mean, for the kind of work that I write, I kind of see myself as an advocate for women and their issues through my storytelling. So it's important to see what else is happening on the continent is the same. 

And I think from the series, we realize it's actually very much the same. It doesn't matter where you are. There's a lot of resonance. So it also bridges that gap. 

The Gold Diggers in itself was partly a response to the 2008 xenophobic violence in South Africa, and nearly two decades later, xenophobic issue and anti-migrant sentiment remains deeply present across the continent. What has changed since you wrote the book, and what has disturbingly stayed the same? 

Well, nothing has changed. I think the anti-xenophobic sentiment has increased, as you have seen over the years, and it correlates really, with the performance of the economy. When the economy is doing badly, we see an increase in the violence. 

And it is. I think most economies, it's not just South Africa, globally. It's been a tough economic climate everywhere. It's almost like we're heading for a global recession. And everywhere as well, in the U.S., UK, you see the anti-foreigner sentiment. 

So it's not just in South Africa. I think it's also an important story. I mean in Europe foreigners are drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. So that's why I'm saying it's a story of our times. 

You’ve spoken about Africans drowning in the Mediterranean in search of a better life. With African culture now receiving enormous global attention, do you think our celebration of that success can sometimes obscure the realities still pushing ordinary Africans to leave home? 

You know, there's something about success that makes one celebrated. Look at the soccer stars. How they are received, in Europe and wherever they are. Their trajectory is different. But they are not representative of the ordinary person. 

And I think it's like that across. Successful people are always welcomed because they have something of value that they are bringing. But then the average Joe is not. And even though her value is not quantifiable, it doesn't negate his or her needs. They're still valid. Whatever reasons they're there for. 

It also changes the dynamics. So it doesn't really matter. You could be a singer, you've got something of export value, so you will be valued. But most people don't. They just want to survive. They are just looking to survive. It's just basic survival. It's just that simple. 

Having worked in television long before The Polygamist reached Netflix. Has working in screenwriting changed how you write novels – or has novel-writing changed how you approach a screenplay? ? 

Yes and no. So I think just working in television has made me understand the mechanics of filmmaking and the differences between the two. So you kind of have an appreciation of what you can do and what you can't do. 

For instance, when you're writing a novel, your world is limitless. I'm not controlled by budgets. I don't have constraints of time. Literally I can do anything in a novel. But in film, you have a budget, time and other constraints. So it's a tightly controlled world. 

When I write novels, I'm not writing them for TV. So that's what I want to be very clear about. Because people think maybe I was writing with the intention of having my books adapted. It was always, it would be nice if it happened, but I was never writing for that medium. I was just writing a story. 

And I think people should look at it that way. Just write a story. And I want, even going forward, I'm not now writing with that as the end goal. I'm still telling a story, which is very important. 

And then the show takes that even further. Characters who existed privately in your imagination suddenly belong to actors, directors and producers. Did seeing Jonasi, Joyce, Matipa, Essie and Lindani on screen make you rethink any of them – or understand them differently?

No. I think they were like the characters in the book. The series did change them, if you look at Joyce's character; in the book she is more passive. In the series she's very aggressive, very cunning, manipulative. She poisons her husband, which is not something she would do in the book. 

So that's what I'm saying. They took that leeway. They took it there. Did that make me understand her better? No. I was like, that wasn't who she was. In writing, the story arc wasn't really about being vengeful. It was more about coming into her own.  

She thought about it. I mean, there were times she thought she wanted to kill him, right? And that really is now the interpretation. So maybe the producers of the series thought, okay, let's show that aspect, her acting on those feelings. But it's just that sometimes you do get mad at people. You want to do things, but you actually don't. And that was really Joyce and her character. 

This is where sometimes the problem with filmmaking, every character has to have a friend. Then they answer things. It works, but then in the instance of Joyce, now you have Joyce having this friend. But in the book she doesn't have friends.

And the reason why she doesn't have friends with a man like Jonasi, would any of her friends be safe around him? You know, it just wouldn't have been a conducive environment. It isolates her in that sense. 

So it's also something they add, but not realizing why. What was the reason for not having them? That's what I'm saying. Certain things, because they're right, you think it's to say, I'm having this woman, and this is why it has to go this way and not this way. 

But for me, no. You know, the characters make sense. Even in the new story onset they introduced, they also make sense. They were not motivated. So it just balanced out. But I can't really say I learned something new. No, they added things which make sense. I mean, like the whole thing of having Lindani as the daughter's friend, which wasn't in the book, but it makes sense, because now you really see Jonasi as a predatory male. 

It just amplifies that character flaw. And I remember thinking, why did I write like that, and then just realizing that in the world that the story is set in, it would not have worked. 

The adaptation has now reached audiences around the world. What has it meant to you to watch people see something of themselves in characters you once created privately?  

Yeah, it's almost like a pat on your back to say, “Well done.” That's really simply what it is. There's power in characterisation, because I always felt that was a strength of the book – these well-formed characters. And you see it in how they translated and resonated and carried, not just in Africa but across the world. Also it's one thing to write these brilliant characters, but I think getting the talent to execute them is also important. This is one of those things where everything came together perfectly.

A lot of African writers dream of seeing their books adapted for film or television. Looking at Queen of Katwe, Children of Blood and Bone and now your experience with The Polygamist, what should African authors pay close attention to when Hollywood comes calling — particularly around rights and creative control? 

Yeah, it's a very tricky one, and I think as a writer you need to really consider what you're giving away and what you're gaining. It's all well and good to say you gain something, because it's not every adaptation that does well. Lots of books have been adapted before, and they don't. Film is a very tricky industry. Some do well, some don't. You never know if it will work out well or it won't.

And some adaptations are very good and some are very bad. It's very fickle as well. They love something, they hate something. So I don't know if there's a formula to it. I wish I could say there is.

And even having creative control doesn't necessarily mean you like the outcome. If you look at Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi had a seat at the writers' table, and that's what every writer would probably think is a dream – to be able to co-write this. But still, even after that, she wasn't happy.

And so that's what I'm saying. Sometimes it's no guarantee that you will like the outcome. For me, sometimes I think if you really want it done the way you would want it, it's actually being the executive producer. That's what you want to be. That's where you really call the shots. Then it becomes: do you have the money to call the shots? Because you have to back that with the investment.

So that's where it really gets tricky. A lot of people in Africa, unfortunately, don't own the IP. And that's where the real power lies – in owning it and being able to leverage it.

And so for me, yes, an adaptation is a start, but it's not the definition of the end game. It's just the beginning. I don't think any writer should see it as the end. It should be the start of something, not the end.

You spent years working in finance and investment before writing full-time. What business lessons from that career have helped you survive as a writer – particularly around contracts, income and intellectual property?  

It's also understanding that creativity is a business. Making films is a business. No one's doing it for fun. And I think writers need to start to realise: how do you monetize your work? I didn't always understand this, but publishing a book is just the starting point. You might not necessarily make money from sales. But look at the book as a door to other things. It could be a door to a motivational speaking career. Some people just have one book, and they're invited all over the world to speak on that book, and they're cashing in on those talks.

In the same way, the film could be a door to film rights, getting money. But what is that money also giving you? What is it opening a door to? The book is also bundled with different rights. What are they giving you? And how can you exploit those different rights? Just don't think in one dimension that it has to be book, published, sales. There's more to that story. Once you see it exist in different forms, then you can see the possibilities. Books become TV shows, there's merchandising, T-shirts – you can do all sorts of things with it.

You've experienced rejection, self-publishing, traditional publishing and now screen adaptation. How do you see the African publishing industry today, particularly for young writers trying to land that first book deal and build sustainable careers?  

Writing is one of those industries with low barriers to entry. Anyone can write. You just have to pick up a pen and paper. There are also low barriers to publishing now. You can literally get your work out there if you want to.

It's very competitive though, and I think people need to understand that environment that you're going into. There are thousands of books every day, new authors. But also understanding that books have longevity. A good story will never die.

I mean, here we are almost 14 years later. The Polygamist came out in 2012. It wasn't a runaway bestseller when it first came out. It had been in the world, but people kept coming back to it. It's also being patient, knowing that, okay, it might not happen now. A lot of writers want instant success, and it happens for other writers, but not necessarily for all of them. So I think it's just having love for what you do and being patient and persevering.

Who are some of the writers whose work you read and admire? What do you love about the way they approach their stories? 

I think the refreshingness they bring to a subject, with a different perspective. There's a book called The Youth of God by Hassan Ghedi Santur about migration. It's about a Somali boy. He's growing up in Canada and it also just explores the same themes of displacement and identity which is something that I explore in The Gold Diggers, but he also does it in quite an interesting way. 

And then there's also another book about migration, Songbirds by Christy Lefteri. I write about domestic workers also in The Gold Diggers, and their lives, you know, especially immigrant workers, and she also tackles the same subject of exploitation, but she does it differently as well. So also you look at it and think, oh wow. 

People like Fatima Bala, the way she brings a refreshing take to romance. I mean, romance as a genre is not something I normally pick up, but the way she wrote Broken was very intriguing. Riveting reads. It's just books that make you reflect. I like contemporary African fictions that I tend to gravitate towards.

And away from writing, who is Sue when work can wait? What does a day off look like for you?  

I would say I like to relax, because I guess my life is very busy. I tend to enjoy spa days, because there aren't so many times I actually get to pamper myself. And get some attention and just indulge myself. 

Cover Image Courtesy of Sue Nyathi

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Heat Check Is More Than a Collection

Femme Nature was created as a space where women can explore femininity, confidence, and style on their own terms. Heat Check takes that idea further, bringing together the attitude of streetwear with pieces that give you the freedom to make the collection your own.

These are pieces made to become part of your everyday rotation. The outfit for a day out with the girls, the look for a party, or the set you throw on when you want to look good without overthinking it.

Plus, there is no single way to wear them. You can go understated, go bold, or mix them with your favourite wardrobe accessories, as long as you bring your own individuality and interpretation to every look.

In short, we want you to make Heat Check yours. 

The collection is available from Sunday, 27th of September at severenature.com. 

Meet the Girls Bringing Heat Check to Life

The Heat Check story started long before the collection launched.

After our open casting call back in August that brought more than 50 women into the campaign, the community selected these queens to join Tara Gold to front the Lagos chapter of Heat Check.

They are making their own bold statements and serving every look with the energy it deserves. While the clothes are at the heart of the collection, the women wearing them are at the centre of the story.

Tara

Tara Gold leads the Lagos chapter of Heat Check, bringing the confidence and presence that made her the perfect fit for the campaign.

Oluchi & Ite.

People mistake them for twins all the time. Our guess? It has something to do with the fact that they are both stylish, bold, and effortlessly bring heat to everything they wear.

Sandela 

Standing at 5'8", Sandela brings a fun, magnetic, and undeniably hot personality to the pieces.

Jess

Jess is sleek, and she effortlessly brings the heat to her style. You can also see her dripping with quiet confidence.

Oyin.

She’s a queen indeed. One fun thing about her: she loves to party, and it shows in every frame she's in.

With a collection full of character, we needed a cast of women who could bring their own interpretation to every piece. And they did, not just in front of the camera, but out in Lagos.

The Campaign Goes Beyond the Lagos

The Lagos night out is only one part of the Heat Check experience.

The campaign continues with Hot or Not, our Lagos × New York styling game show where fashion stylists and community girls put their own spin on pieces from the collection.

Then comes the Heat Check Launch Party, a community experience where women can shop the collection, hang out, meet other girls, and enjoy the day together.

This launch is a whole experience because Femme Nature is not just about what you wear. It is also about the women you meet, the connections you make, and the community you become part of. And Lagos is only the beginning.

Heat Check will extend to London and Brazil, giving women in different cities the opportunity to bring life to Femme Nature through their own identities, cultures, rhythms, and personal styles.

The Femme Nature Story Continues

For us, Heat Check is more than a launch. It is another step in Femme Nature’s growth as a movement and as a medium for expressing your truest and most confident self, not just through the clothes, but through a community of talented, beautiful, and supportive women.

Through Femme Club, styling experiences, and community events, we are inviting women to participate in the world around the clothes.

We are transforming how women dress, how they express themselves, and how they see one another.

We have created room for women with different personalities, perspectives, energies, and body types. So, we know you will find your new favourite pieces and accessories that help you be yourself.

Of course, following this second collection, watch out, because there is still so much more to come from Femme Nature.

Till then:

Heat Check is officially live.

The heat is yours to make!

Are you Hot or Not?

Head to severenature to shop and follow @severenature on Instagram to stay connected to the Femme Nature community.

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For more than four decades, African athletes have been some of the most recognisable figures at the World Athletics Championships. They have won titles, broken records, dominated distance events and repeatedly reshaped what is possible on the track and in the field.

However, in spite of all of Africa’s influence on the competition, the championships themselves have never been held on the continent. That changed this week when Nairobi was awarded the right to host the 2029 edition, making Kenya the first African country to stage the senior global championships – closing a gap that has existed since the inaugural edition in Helsinki in 1983.

Notably, African athletes have taken part since that first run and every year after that. Nigeria’s Ajayi Agbebaku won bronze in the triple jump, Morocco’s Said Aouita took bronze in the 1,500 metres, and Ethiopia’s Kebede Balcha won silver in the marathon. 

In the wider scheme of things, Kenya became synonymous with distance running as did Ethiopia which produced generations of champions who transformed the 5,000 and 10,000 metres. As well as many other African nations’ formidable sprinters and field athletes going on to compete at the highest level.

The continent’s influence has also extended beyond the events it has traditionally dominated. In 1991, Zambia’s Samuel Matete won the 400 metres hurdles in Tokyo, becoming the first African man to win a World Championships title outside the middle- and long-distance events. Namibia’s Frankie Fredericks became one of the defining sprinters of the 1990s, winning four Olympic silver medals and multiple World Championships medals.

Then came another generation determined to broaden the picture. At the 2015 World Championships in Beijing, Kenya topped the medal table for the first time. Nicholas Bett won the 400 metres hurdles, becoming the first Kenyan to win a global title in the event. Julius Yego won the javelin, while David Rudisha and Vivian Cheruiyot added titles in events Kenya had long dominated. That same championships saw South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk win the 400 metres category, another reminder that the continent’s relationship with elite athletics could not be reduced to distance running.

Since its inception, the World Championships have travelled through Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East, with Rome, Tokyo, Athens, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, London, Doha and more having all hosted editions – with the exception of any major city across Africa.

This has however not been due to the region lacking an athletics audience or a history of staging major competitions. In fact, Kenya’s relationship with international athletics hosting has been developing for years. The East African country hosted the World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa in 2007, bringing one of the sport’s major global events to the country’s coast and a decade later, Nairobi hosted the World Under-18 Championships in 2017, followed by the World Under-20 Championships in 2021.

Elsewhere, Kampala hosted the World Cross Country Championships in 2017, while Gaborone hosted the World Athletics Relays just in May this year.

Taken together, these events show a gradual expansion of Africa’s experience in staging international athletics and a potential in doing the same for sport’s biggest outdoor championships.

Nonetheless, Nairobi’s journey to 2029 has also involved a near miss. Kenya had previously bid to host the 2025 World Athletics Championships, but Tokyo was selected in 2022, as it offered an established athletics venue in the Olympic Stadium and the experience of hosting the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, which had been delayed to 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even after losing that bid, Nairobi relentlessly continued building its event infrastructure and reputation. The city has hosted the Kip Keino Classic, part of the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold series, while the country has continued to stage major international competitions. Nairobi’s experience with the World U18 and U20 Championships also gave organisers a practical understanding of what it takes to bring athletes, officials, media and spectators together for a global athletics event – all of which have accumulated the experience that now sits behind the 2029 championship.

And there is a particularly significant reason why Kenya is an appropriate place for the competition to arrive. Athletics is not simply another sport in the country. It is woven into the nation's sporting identity.

Kenya has spent decades producing some of the world's most recognisable distance runners, from Kipchoge Keino and Tegla Loroupe to David Rudisha, Eliud Kipchoge, Faith Kipyegon and Beatrice Chebet. And the World Championships have been one of the places where that tradition has been measured against the rest of the world.

At the 2025 competitions in Tokyo, Kenya won seven gold medals and 11 medals overall, finishing second on the medal table. Faith Kipyegon won the 1,500 metres, Beatrice Chebet claimed the 5,000 and 10,000 metres titles, Emmanuel Wanyonyi won the 800 metres, Lilian Odira took the 800 metres title, and Peres Jepchirchir won the marathon.

Kenyan athletes continue to arrive at the World Championships as medal contenders, while young athletes across the country grow up watching those championships as one of the highest stages in their sport. So for generations of African fans whose experience of the World Championships or any other for that matter, has largely been watching athletes leave home – for them to be on home soil couldn’t have been more welcomed.

More broadly,what Nairobi's hosting rights represent for African athletics beyond the nine days or so of competition is significant. A World Athletics Championships requires considerably more than a stadium. It involves accommodation for thousands of athletes and officials, transport, training facilities, competition venues, accreditation systems, security, medical services, broadcasting infrastructure, volunteers and the ability to manage a global media operation.

The event therefore could be seen as a test of the city’s capacity as much as its sporting enthusiasm, one arriving at another interesting moment as Kenya also prepares to co-host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations alongside Uganda and Tanzania. That means the country is entering a period in which international sporting events will demand increasingly sophisticated infrastructure and event-management systems.

The developments surrounding Kasarani and other sporting facilities such as the almost-completed Raila Odinga International Stadium will therefore matter beyond any single tournament. The success of these events will influence how Nairobi is perceived as a destination for international sport and potentially create the experience and infrastructure needed for future competitions.

The World Championships will document much of that evolution. Nairobi 2029 as the precedent will ultimately depend on what happens after the closing ceremony. Will the investment in facilities and event expertise continue? Will more African cities be considered for major World Athletics competitions? Will hosting create opportunities for young athletes, coaches, officials, journalists and sports professionals beyond the competition itself?

Those questions are still open. For now, though, the historical significance is straightforward, that Nairobi’s turn is not bringing the World Athletics Championships to a continent discovering athletics for the first time rather one that’s been part of and ready all along.

Cover Credit: Getty Images

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New York Fashion Week has historically operated behind velvet ropes. For decades, the industry prioritized exclusive, invite-only runway shows marked by million-dollar production budgets, quiet front rows, and an unspoken culture of gatekeeping.

While those traditional spectacles highlight high fashion, they often disconnect the broader community from the very pulse that fuels it.

This year, however, the paradigm shifted. Moving away from insular elitism toward raw, unfiltered inclusivity, Deeds Mag, iconic street-luxury brand Evisu, and automotive powerhouse Gearheads joined forces to bridge that gap. On Saturday, the trio officially took over Grand Street in Soho, drawing a massive crowd of 5,282 attendees to transform one of Manhattan’s most historic blocks into an electric, global celebration of living culture.

The heart of the movement anchored at 93 Grand Street, the Evisu flagship where an energetic block party flooded the sidewalk while immersive experiences and curated activities unfolded inside the store.

Guest-focused moments brought the interior to life, highlighted by live portrait drawings of attendees created on the spot by art illustrator Sai. The takeover rested on the seamless convergence of three distinct creative pillars: publishing, structural fashion, and high-end automotive curation.

Evisu, a brand etched deep into streetwear lineage, famously immortalized by icons like Jay-Z, Nas, Eve, Jadakiss, and Soulja Boy during hip-hop’s most defining style eras, brought its relentless focus on raw denim and structural craft. Behind the scenes, Paul Oriaku worked diligently on behalf of the brand’s US branch, helping drive the PR momentum to bring the Evisu vision directly to the streets.

Gearheads, spearheaded by founder Thomas Lombardino, cultural brand strategist Isaiah Cheltenham, and media director Alan Xu, brought the roaring heat of luxury car culture straight to the pavement, demonstrating how high-octane engineering shares the exact same design language as high fashion.

Anchoring it all was Deeds Mag, applying its founding ethos of raw community and authentic storytelling to ensure the day belonged to the city itself.

Grand Street became a living, breathing runway without a single assigned seat. The asphalt was packed with an organic kaleidoscope of style, where attendees casually mixed high-end archive pieces with pure streetwear. Rick Owens, Burberry, Valentino, and Saint Laurent melted seamlessly into Supreme, Diesel, Dsquared2, and statement Evisu denim.

The sidewalk inspiration was relentless, powered behind the scenes and on the pavement by a network of key contributors: Red Bull helped fuel the energy by providing drinks and supporting the event’s soundscape, local favorite Rich Tastee LLC kept the crew fed with authentic Jamaican bites, alongside drinks courtesy of Kayla and the Staylifted Experience, refreshing sips from Aliyah's Nouri Matcha, custom street backdrop art painted by Dieglo, and nostalgic treats served fresh from Adil's ice cream truck.

Adding to the heavy energy of the afternoon was the presence of talent and cultural heavyweights like Manny Wellz, Tyshawn Jones, Jadakiss, Trey Songz, Michael Rainey Jr., Foggieraw, Fireboy, and DJ Envy who pulled up purely as a guest to show love and support without spinning a set all tapping directly into the community energy. Meanwhile, the sonic backdrop kept Grand Street vibrating all day long, fueled by a relentless rotation of sets from Polly and Pamy, DJ Tobago, DJ KO, DJ Mike West, and unbornsounds.

This NYFW takeover proved that real luxury isn’t about who you keep out; it's about the undeniable energy you bring together. When fashion honors the people who actually wear, support, and breathe life into the culture every day, it becomes dynamic and eternal. If this weekend was any indication of where the industry is headed, the streets of New York haven’t just crashed the party they’ve officially reclaimed the runway.

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When Kim Kardashian and Lewis Hamilton made their first public red carpet appearance as a couple at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, the relationship was only part of what people were looking at. Kardashian wore a shimmering archival Yves Saint Laurent gown from Tom Ford’s FW04 collection, while Hamilton wore Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello, and by the next morning, the looks were everywhere. Both had been styled by Law Roach, whose name was already making headlines after ASOS announced him as its first-ever Stylist in Residence two days earlier. It was an unusually concentrated display of the position Roach has built for himself over the last decade: he is still working through celebrities, but his own name has become impossible to separate from the images he creates for them.

For most of fashion’s history, that sentence would have been difficult to imagine. The stylist worked behind the scenes, their name appearing in small magazine credits if it appeared at all, beneath the designer, photographer and celebrity. They sourced the archival pieces, built the visual narrative and decided which clothes could tell the right story for a particular moment, but the person making those decisions rarely became part of the conversation. The CFDA did not introduce a Stylist Award until 2023, and Roach was its first recipient.

He started styling a 14-year-old Zendaya in 2011, when she was still a Disney Channel star. What followed over the next 15 years became a demonstration of what a stylist could do when given the space to work as a creative partner. The tennis whites for Challengers. The vintage Mugler robot suit for Dune: Part Two. The Schiaparelli feather gown made from 65,000 blue and black raw silk feathers for The Drama press tour. The clothes often generated their own coverage, sometimes before audiences had even seen the films they were attached to. “Method dressing” became part of the fashion conversation in large part because of the work Roach and Zendaya were doing together. The stylist had become part of the image, and eventually part of the story behind it. Roach calls himself an Image Architect. His career has made the title difficult to argue with.

The ASOS appointment follows that same shift in the stylist’s role. The British retailer created its first-ever Stylist in Residence position for Roach, giving him a role that goes beyond dressing individual clients. He will style six covers for the relaunched ASOS Magazine, work across seasonal campaigns and styling content, and bring his perspective into the brand’s fashion point of view. ASOS commissioned research among 1,952 UK consumers and found that 68 percent said knowing what to buy was easier than knowing how to wear it. The company has been building its strategy around that gap, positioning itself as a stylist as much as a retailer, and Roach gives that idea a recognisable face. His name carries an authority that most retail stylists cannot easily manufacture, which means his involvement changes how the clothes are presented before a customer has even decided what to buy.

His new relationship with Kim Kardashian raises a different question. nss Magazine recently questioned whether Roach is selling out, pointing to his work with Kardashian, Lauren Sánchez Bezos and ASOS as a departure from the creative relationship he built with Zendaya. Its argument is that Roach's name now carries enough fashion authority to be valuable to the people and brands he works with, allowing him to transfer some of that cultural capital through his styling. Kardashian is an interesting case because she already has enormous visibility and does not need Roach to introduce her to fashion audiences in the way a less established client might. What she gets is his eye, his access to fashion history and the credibility that comes with his involvement. What Roach gets is a client who guarantees attention every time she steps outside. The archival YSL gown she wore to the museum opening therefore did more than look good on a red carpet. It connected Kardashian to Tom Ford's YSL, gave Roach another major image to put his name behind, and turned a vintage piece from 2004 into one of the week's most discussed fashion moments.

Roach is part of a shift that has been happening across fashion for the last two decades. Rachel Zoe built a media career around her styling in the mid-2000s. Pat McGrath turned her reputation as a makeup artist into a beauty company, while Nicola Formichetti moved from styling into creative direction. The pattern is similar each time: a person who once worked largely behind the scenes becomes recognisable in their own right, builds an audience around their taste and eventually finds that their name has commercial value. Roach's career shows how far that shift has gone in styling. He has a long-term creative partnership with Zendaya, a residency with a major retail platform and a new relationship with Kim Kardashian, three very different parts of the industry that now meet around his name. Taken together, they show how much the role of the stylist has changed.

ASOS is using Roach's name to help shape how its customers think about clothes. Kardashian is bringing him into a relationship where his taste, access and fashion authority become part of the value of the image. The CFDA created a Stylist Award and gave its first one to Roach in 2023, giving institutional recognition to a role that had historically existed in the background. The “Image Architect” title Roach has used for years once sounded like a description of where he wanted the profession to go. Looking at the position he now occupies, it is a fairly accurate description of what the job has become.

Cover Credit: Law Roach

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‘The Inner Compass Is EXITECHNO’ 

For what it’s worth, no one might have ever known that the South African producer-DJ, FKA Mash, spent several years creating his latest opus EXITECHNO. He had spent years attempting to make an album, only to abandon projects after four or five songs when they no longer felt right. Then, almost unexpectedly, the project he had been trying to make for years finally came together.

It is a fitting development for an artist whose relationship with music has always been rooted in instinct. FKA Mash began making music at 12 and officially started releasing in 2011, developing a sound that moves through House and Techno while remaining open to the different influences that have shaped his musical life. 

His 2019 remix of Sculptured Music’s, “Sad To Think” earned him Remix of the Year at the Dance Music Awards, South Africa and a South African Music Awards nomination, further introducing his sound to a wider audience.

Since then, his career has taken him onto stages alongside names including Black Coffee, Jimpster, WhoMadeWho and Kerri Chandler, while performances across international electronic music spaces have expanded the world around his music. Yet, beneath the career milestones, there remains a recurring idea: the music has to feel right to him first.

On Friday September 25, that instinct takes the form of EXITECHNO, FKA Mash’s debut album. Named from the combination of “EXIT” and “TECHNO,” the project marks a new chapter for an artist who says he found the album before he even realised he had one. 

Ahead of its release, Deeds caught up with FKA Mash to talk about his beginnings, the evolution of his sound, the journey that brought him to his debut album and what it means to finally let EXITECHNO out into the world.

Sussan For Deeds Magazine: For anyone discovering FKA MASH for the first time, how would you introduce yourself and the music you make?

My name is Mashoto Gabedi Lekgothoane, also known as FKA MASH. I’m a DJ and a House and Techno music artist from South Africa, Soweto, Johannesburg to be specific. I would introduce myself as a musician. I obviously make different kinds of music, but I am known for making House music and Techno. That’s more or less how I would introduce myself.

Deeds: You’ve been making music since you were 12 and you officially started releasing in 2011. When you look back at those early years, what has changed most about the way you approach music and understand yourself as an artist?

So much has changed obviously, and I still wouldn’t say it has changed but I’d say it has evolved, because some of the methods I used when I was 12, I still use a lot of them today because I still believe in those methods. They are methods that have shaped the artist I am today.

One thing that I always try to do when I make music is to go with the feeling. Does it feel right? Does it feel good to me first and foremost? Then every other thing follows. Does it work for the market? Would people like it? But the most important thing is whether or not this feels good to me, and it has always been like that even when I was young before releasing officially.

As your sound began to take shape, your 2019 remix of Sculptured Music’s “Sad To Think” won Remix of the Year and earned a South African Music Awards nomination. What was happening creatively for you at that point that you think allowed that record to connect so strongly with people?

At that time, it was basically, more people were becoming familiar with my sound and there was growing excitement around Deep House in South Africa. There were different waves at different times; Gqom at some point, then Afrohouse, then Soul music, then Amapiano. There were different waves and music that happened at different times, and so with that remix, it was almost like a new wave of music was starting to rise in the South African space.

The other part of it, it just sounded different from everything that was in the market at the time, so people gravitated towards it and they started to think the original was an exciting song. So to have a remix that just sounded different and ultimately earn an SAMA nomination, which is the South African Music Awards nomination, and win Remix of the Year, it kind of connected well. Everything threaded well together.

You’ve performed alongside artists like Black Coffee, Jimpster, WhoMadeWho and Kerri Chandler. What have you learned from sharing the stage with artists you respect in terms of performance, artistry, sound and professionalism?

 The most important thing I learned during those opportunities is how important it is to show up as yourself. Obviously being professional is important. There’s always a way to conduct yourself in those places that will ensure they keep on coming back to you.

The most important thing I took away then and even now, whenever I get to show up on a lineup with anyone I look up to, respect or grew up listening to, is that it is always important to be genuine and show up as yourself. Do not try to be something else, do not try to be like the person you’re sharing the lineup with. Do not try to be anything else outside of yourself. That’s why they brought you there.

After more than a decade of releasing music and performing around the world, why did now feel like the right moment to make EXITECHNO, your debut album? And what does the title mean to you?

Basically, I think it felt right. For the longest time, I’ve tried to make an album and it just didn’t flow right. At some point, I’d stop at maybe four or five songs and not feel the urge to continue making more music for a larger project. And as time went on, I decided to either drop an EP, a single or a remix and just keep that going, which is what I connected most with at the time.

For some reason, when it comes to this album, one morning I’m not thinking about an album, literally a week after I have an album to present to the world. It’s just something that happened so organically that I didn’t even feel the need to force it and build towards an album. In fact, I feel like I had the album before I even knew I had the album.

It kind of explains the meaning and the name EXITECHNO, because it describes where I am and where I was when making the project in life. It is a play on the word EXIT and the word TECHNO. The EXIT is where I am in my life, where I am walking away from a certain way of doing things, living and moving into a new way of doing things for myself. The TECHNO part stands for the music that is carrying that story and journey for me.

That’s why I call it EXITECHNO. It’s real world because I struggled for a long time and out of nowhere, I was like, I’m releasing this album and I had an album. I think it just came from a higher power above me and it just landed.

When you say you struggled, can you give a brief insight?

 I struggled because I am a bit of a perfectionist myself, and one of the things that always dictates how I put together a project is how well it flows and, more importantly, I always try to avoid making the same song more than once.

That also feeds into why I struggled making an album because in order for an album to be cohesive, you have to have like a common thread amongst these songs to make it sound like it follows a particular theme. And what made it difficult over the years was that I am so inspired and interested in music and finding new ways to new sounds that it became difficult for me to stick to one idea to make it work.

And I’m sure if people listen to the album, they would be able to catch that because the album holds a lot of different feelings, emotions, styles and approaches to how I make music. But at the same time, I found a way to thread it together perfectly so it sounds like a cohesive project without sticking to the same idea for too long throughout the project. That was the main struggle that made it difficult to come up with an album.

 The album arrives after years of moving between places like Soweto, Ibiza, Bali and London, while also coming from a South African House tradition with its own distinct history and identity. How did these different experiences and influences come together in the album, and what were you trying to explore on a full-length project that you couldn’t necessarily express through individual releases?

The first thing is that South Africa has always had a strong House music culture for the longest time, and one of the things that made it easy for me to explore different styles and ideas is because I interacted with them before I even started to travel.

So the world of House music from around the world came to us here in South Africa as a culture before I started going out into the world. So I’ve always been aware of what Afrohouse, Soul and Techno from this place sound like.

As a result, when I started to travel and see the music in action in different places, it connected differently and started to make sense to me on how and why it works the way it works. And I think, if anything, this album is going to be a true representation of my interpretation of those experiences as I travelled and what we had while growing up in South Africa.

 As South African electronic music continues to reach audiences around the world, what do you think international listeners sometimes mistake about the culture and history behind the music, and what do you think EXITECHNO allows them to understand or feel?

First of all, I’m hoping that EXITECHNO gives people a different glimpse into what is actually happening in South African music. And it’s not only Amapiano, House or Soul music. There are different scenes within South African House music, especially in South Africa, that exist and are thriving.

Also, there’s a story to tell from that perspective as well. Not to try and politicize the whole thing, it is important that a different perspective of what exists in South Africa is told to the world. I think that’s the best way I can answer that.

You are set to perform at the Amsterdam Dance Event this year. How does performing a new body of work change the way you think about the album compared to listening to it privately in the studio?

Well, it affects how I think about it for sure. If you hear some of the songs in the album, you’d realise that a lot of them definitely cannot be played in the club. That’s very intentional because sometimes, I like to make what I call “the headphone music” which is music you can jam in the most intimate settings of your life. It could be your room, house or very isolated settings, as opposed to some of the other club songs that you will find in the album.

The most important thing about how I make music is that I make music for different parts of my set. So if I realise I haven’t had an intro song in a long time and I am maybe in my DJ set playing other people’s songs, at some point, I would make a version of an intro song or a closing song that represents exactly how I’m feeling, as opposed to waiting for the world to give that to me.

How I make music is always very functional. It’s like this song is for this moment, this song is to live in a moment, and it would live for as long as possible.

 You’ve spoken about growing up around Jazz, R&B and Soul, with Michael Jackson being a particular favourite and influence, while you are also drawn to thrillers and the idea of one day hearing your music in that kind of setting. If you could place EXITECHNO inside a film, what kind of story would you want it to soundtrack, and what would that say about the kind of artist you ultimately want to become?

(Laughs) That’s a tough one because I’m still, even now after so many years of making music, still sculpting the kind of artist that I want to be.

And I’ve always maintained one thing throughout my career: I want to write someone’s favourite song of all time. I think the constant chase to be able to write someone’s favourite song is what keeps me building towards being the artist I want to be.

I feel like that visual or film that I want to place this album in is somewhat a buildup of what my life has become up until now. My life and career has started to grow, meeting all the people that I’ve connected with. It’s just a playing visual of what would tie in perfectly with what EXITECHNO is about because it basically sounds like my life.

I don’t exactly know how to place it, but it feels like if I could take a look back into my life and what it has turned into, it would make a perfect visual for EXITECHNO. It sounds and looks like my life.

‍ Cover Credit: Jon Berry 

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After the February and March shows of the fall/winter collection, Fashion Week is back with much buzz for the spring/summer counterpart with stops in Copenhagen, Seoul, Milan, London, Paris, and New York. Copenhagen and Seoul happened earlier in September, London is currently in motion, and Paris and Milan are set to pop off for the exciting week.

Fashion weeks are always an exciting time for new energy to be injected into the mainstream.   Designers decide what trends dominate the industry through their collections and what stories are told through their spectacular shows. New York Fashion Week Spring-Summer wrapped up in mid-September after the showing of 63 shows. The week featured regulars like Tory Burch and Sandy Liang and emerging designers, Miss Clare Sullivan, Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen and more. We rounded up 10 of our favourite moments at the New York Fashion Week. 

1. Proenza Schouler 

Is the animal print back? Proenza Schouler begs the question in their collection. This is the second collection the designer, Rachel Scott, is making for the brand and the drapery found across the dresses on the runway is excellent. Scott told WWD, “The woman of New York kind of reflects the city, they kind of reflect each other.”

Evening-style dresses were paired with utilitarian bags and the use of chrome yellow as a pop of colour tied into the spirit of rebirth that is the spring season. The Proenza Schouler woman in the show is one who isn't bound by rules. She makes fashion work for herself and not the other way around. If the point isn't clear with the multiple suits and perfectly silhouetted dresses, then, the tiger print in multiple colours and style would show you who a Proenza Schouler woman is. 

2. Diotima

Rachel Scott's Diotima has always had a strong relationship with craft, but for Spring/Summer 2027, that relationship felt almost elemental. Inspired by her connection to the Caribbean Sea and the women she imagined across its history, Scott built a collection around movement, memory and the tension between beauty and something much heavier underneath it. She was thinking about the sea not only as something beautiful, but as a burial ground for ancestors.

That tension translated beautifully into the clothes. Jamaican hand-crochet appeared alongside increasingly sophisticated tailoring, while organza was manipulated into three-dimensional forms that looked almost aquatic. Long coats finished with dense ruffles moved like waves, while dresses hugged the body before breaking away into dramatic textures. There was also a sensuality to the collection, particularly in the body-skimming dresses with cascading ruffles.

Diotima has never treated craft as an afterthought, and SS27 pushes that idea further. Scott is proving that handmade techniques can occupy the same space as sharp tailoring and eveningwear without losing their cultural character. The collection feels like a maturation of Diotima without abandoning what made the label interesting in the first place.

3. Thom Browne

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The show was rightfully titled, Metamorphosis, and Thom Browne pieces were backdropped into comically large installations of garden elements. This set design choice immediately reminded me of the Chanel Haute Couture Fall/Winter show in Paris earlier this year. 

The show began with majestic dancers in tulle and colourful patterns and one of the dancers was put in a cocoon, mimicking a butterfly's chrysalis. In this collection, Thom Browne drove the metamorphosis point home. The models wore mini bowl cuts and bold lipsticks, perhaps a visual reference to bugs. Multiple nature motifs appeared throughout this collection, from ants creeping on suits to butterfly wing print being featured as patterns on clothes and bags while actual butterflies adorned shoes.

The show showed a use of layering in preppy suits that is unsurprising for Thom Browne. The clothes moved fluidly and many pieces blurred the lines between the beginning of one layer and the end of the other. Statement dresses with a dramatic hip cut referenced the lady bug and many other insects. The collection's ambitious use of colour and patterns is a reflection of the beauty of nature and it is a perfect reminder as we are bearing witness to a worsening climate crisis. Thom Browne told W Magazine backstage after the show, "For me, it was a very naive childhood story, and I thought it would bring smiles to everybody’s face." 

4. Bad Binch TONGTONG

Bad Binch TONGTONG did not seem particularly interested in the idea that clothes should behave themselves. Terrence Zhou's return to the runway after two years made that very clear. Presented at New York's Balloon Museum, the Spring/Summer 2027 collection turned the human body into something closer to a moving sculpture, with garments expanding, floating and distorting the shape underneath them.

Neoprene, shredded packaging foam and exaggerated hoops became wildly oversized silhouettes, while one of the show's most dramatic looks appeared to hover around Saweetie's body rather than simply sit on it. Elsewhere, Zhou brought the collection back down to earth with ruched bodycon skirts, ruffled tops and sporty pieces in bright blue and green. Those more wearable looks gave the collection somewhere to land after all the spectacle.

What makes the brand interesting is that the clothes don't necessarily ask to be understood before they are enjoyed. They are funny, strange and deliberately excessive. In an industry increasingly obsessed with whether a look will perform online, Zhou seems perfectly comfortable making clothes that demand to be seen in motion.

5. Sandy Liang 

After the Sandy Liang and Cou Cou Intimates collaboration was announced last month, I expected nothing but childlike nostalgia at her NYFW show. Sandy Liang brought a large-size medieval castle to the centre of her show, and the models worked around it. It felt like a representation of the ever magical presence of your childhood, that is still present in the room with you even as you grow older. 

The designer is known to capture coquette details in a modern woman and her spring/summer collection is no different. Liang proves the creative genius she is by pairing ugly workwear and athleisure with girly elements like satin, lace, and tulle. It's perfect for the grit of New York. Her use of the lime green in several pieces in the collection is gorgeous and revitalising. A skirt with too many pockets and a purse detail that resembles a fanny pack made several appearances in the show. The collection is everything you would experience in a Sandy Liang show; glitter, pink, and lots of bows. 

6. LaQuan Smith

In a push not to abandon the woman who made his clothes famous, this time around LaQuan Smith chose to simply give her more hours in the day. For SS27, the designer looked beyond the party dress and built a wardrobe that could move between the daytime and the after-hours without losing the sex appeal that has become synonymous with his name.

The collection worked through contradiction. Fluffy skirts met sporty windbreakers, delicate pieces sat alongside tougher outerwear, and Smith's usual body-conscious glamour was joined by tailoring and denim. Even the animal prints played with that tension, with Bambi-like spots meeting the fierceness of cheetah and embossed python pushing jackets and skirts into sculptural shapes.

The eveningwear still knows how to make an entrance. A barely-there orange gown floated down the runway, while a sparkling gown created with Children of Blood and Bone offered another cinematic moment. But the more interesting development was Smith's “bombshell suiting,” particularly dark denim sets that could be zipped and unzipped to change their shape. An ode to perhaps Smith’s years spent mastering the language of nightlife, this season’s presentation felt like an attempt to make that language work beyond midnight.

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7. Carolina Herrera 

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The 45th anniversary of Carolina Herrera told the tale of a liberated, independent woman. Carolina Herrera handed the creative keys to Wes Gordon eight years ago and their 2027 spring/summer collection showcased a series of colours; ranging from yellow to red and pastels. 

Polka dots dotted the entire collection and fur trims were a recurring moment. Accessories like head scarves and fluffy earrings also saw a time at the runway. The generous use of yellow brought so much energy into the show, especially against the 28,798 yellow tulips(originally 28,800 but Gordon handed two tulips to his children, Henry and Georgia) generously planted in the venue.

The gracious movement of the pieces alluded to a woman on the go. Several graphical pieces were shown in this collection including the face of a young Carolina Herrera, who was also present in the show, in a style that's reminiscent of the pop art era. The print of one of a The New Yorker magazine cover also made appearances on several pieces. 

The illustration was of the New York skyline and it was made by the artist, Lonni Sui Johnson. The magazine was published in 1981, the day of Carolina Herrera runway debut in New York. Wes Gordon told The New Yorker about this full-circle moment, "For this collection, that is of the city we love, It's our great privilege to be able to include The New Yorker." The New Yorker has a worldwide circulation of over 1.3 million people, according to The Guardian. 

8. Pipenco

Pipenco's Spring/Summer 2027 collection begins with a woman who is supposed to scare you. Lorena Pipenco looked to Muma Pădurii, the “Mother of the Forest” from Romanian folklore, for a collection about a figure whose frightening appearance hides her role as a protector of the forest and the life within it.

That duality gave the collection its most interesting quality. The clothes were not simply trying to make folklore look pretty. Sculptural forms wrapped around the body like armour, while branch-like details gave some of the looks an almost creature-like quality. The silhouettes could feel imposing at first glance, but there was softness underneath the drama. Pipenco used the tension between protection and vulnerability as a design language rather than treating them as opposing ideas.

It is a particularly interesting approach to folklore because the collection does not seem trapped in the past. Instead, Muma Pădurii becomes a way of thinking about the modern woman; intimidating when necessary, protective by nature and softer than her exterior might suggest, proving that fashion can take a story from another time without turning it into costume.

9. Khaite

Khaite NYFW SS27 opened with Kaia Gerber confidently strutting on the theatrically lit industrial runway. She evoked a woman on a mission in a white bra and an unzipped black skirt. Her hair was messy, a trait that  was common among the Khaite girls of the SS27 show. 

The show was a monochromatic tell-all of the fluidity of womanhood. The creative director, Catherine Holstein, juxtaposed the flowy dresses against an undone head of hair and a seemingly biting personality. This made the model lineup look more like a coven of witches than glamorous women in the industry. 

The minor detail of the model's nails being painted dark is a testament to the wild woman theory of Khaite SS27. If there's one trend that the Khaite show wants you to take home, it's to wear your underwear publicly. Bras remained a focal point across a few pieces as a standout piece or it was used in creative styling. Sheer dresses and skirts with green and pink floral embellishments also got a moment on the runway. The show was a nice balance of structured pieces and loose, flowy ones. To Khaite, the summer and spring of 2027 is the year you free the nipple and live vicariously.

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10. Cult Gaia

Beginning in mourning and ending in celebration, Cult Gaia's SS27 collection, titled Behesht – the Persian word for heaven – is Jasmin Larian Hekmat's meditation on the loss of her grandmother, Mommy Aghdas, earlier this year. But this wasn't a collection interested in staying in grief. Instead, Hekmat explored what happens when beauty begins to return after a difficult period.

The shift was visible on the runway. The opening looks were darker and more restrained, including a deep olive suit with a sculpted shoulder and capri trousers, before the collection gradually loosened into plissé dresses, sheer floral separates and shimmering metallic pieces. A gold chainmail skirt brought some much-needed drama, while Hekmat's growing interest in menswear showed up through a relaxed black linen suit, fringed tweed shorts and a plum plissé shirt with a built-in tie.

What makes the collection particularly compelling is how Hekmat plays with opposites. Hard, architectural shapes meet fabrics that move with the body. Dark tailoring gives way to romantic florals. The clothes can feel protective in one moment and completely exposed in the next. It is a visual language that mirrors the collection's central idea: something beautiful can emerge from a place that once felt barren.

The finale made that idea almost literal. Hand-painted silk gowns, dip-dyed to resemble feathers, floated down the runway as pink flower petals fell from above. It could have easily become too sentimental, but the spectacle worked because the clothes had already taken the audience through the transformation. Cult Gaia's SS27 woman isn't simply dressing for a vacation or a night out. She's coming out the other side of something – and looking good while she does it.

Cover Credits: Rodin Banica/WWD

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The Tabi first appeared at Maison Margiela’s 1988 show, with its split toe drawn from the Japanese tabi sock. It was an odd proposition for Western fashion at the time, dividing the foot down the middle and looking deliberately out of place among the shoes then being shown. Margiela put it into production anyway. Nearly four decades later, the Tabi remains in the house’s collections and has become one of fashion’s most recognisable shoes. 

You do not have to know Martin Margiela’s name to recognise a Tabi. That may be its most fitting legacy. The shoe has endured on its own terms, much like the designer who created it, who spent his career making sure the clothes were seen before he was.

Martin Margiela founded the house in 1988 and did not give a single interview as himself throughout his time there. He communicated through his team, signed correspondence with “we” instead of “I”, and sometimes attended his own shows in disguise, sitting among the audience without being recognised. The house’s white label followed the same thinking. Four white stitches held a plain white rectangle in place, with no name visible from the outside, and the label was designed to be removed. It was a small detail, but it said a great deal about how Margiela wanted his clothes to be seen. The work came first, he left the house in 2009 without a public farewell, and the house continued without him. The Tabis stayed, so did the four stitches.

In the years between Margiela’s departure and now, the fashion industry moved in almost the opposite direction. Social media turned designers into personalities, with their lives becoming part of the brands they represented. Behind-the-scenes content became a marketing tool in its own right, and showing the process became almost as important as showing the finished collection. Luxury houses began selling a sense of access: the designer’s point of view, the studio, the fittings, the people behind the clothes. Louis Vuitton hired Pharrell Williams and made his visibility part of the house’s identity. Bottega Veneta became closely associated with the sensibility of its creative director. The thinking was simple enough: show people more, bring them closer, and they become more invested in the brand. Maison Margiela, under Glenn Martens since 2020, kept its distance. 

‍Anonymity is Maison Margiela’s FW26 campaign, presented as a trailer for a psychological thriller that does not exist. Directed by Thibaut Grevet and starring Rebecca Hall, the film follows an actress preparing for a role who begins encountering a masked version of herself dressed in the same clothes. 

Each mask was handcrafted at the Maison Margiela Paris atelier using pieces from the Artisanal collection, the house’s most labour-intensive line, which is made by hand from found objects and recycled materials. As the film progresses, it becomes difficult to tell which version of the woman is real. 

Hall described the experience of making it as capturing “a funny war always going on between one's identity as a figure in the public eye and one's desire to disappear.” The collection arrived in stores on September 9, 2026, while the film continues to circulate online as a trailer for a film that was never made.

The mask has been part of Margiela’s vocabulary since before there was a Margiela. At the house’s first show in 1988, models’ faces were obscured, sometimes with hair, sometimes through shadow and staging that kept attention away from the person wearing the clothes. The clothes were what the audience was meant to look at. 

The Artisanal masks in Anonymity carry that same idea 38 years later, but they are being presented to a very different kind of audience. In 1988, fashion images could take weeks to reach people through magazines and newspapers. In 2026, a campaign can reach millions within hours, competing with everything else on their screens for attention. The mask does more than hide the face now. It gives the image something to hold onto. 

Anonymity is not simply a return to the founding gestures of a house built by a man who preferred to stay out of view. Martens has been at Margiela long enough to establish his own relationship with those codes. He keeps returning to them because they still make sense for the house, not because they belong to its history. The idea is that what a designer chooses not to show can say as much as what they put in front of you. A refusal to explain can leave room for the audience to make its own connections. The unfinished film, the mask that never comes off, the label designed to be cut out all work in a similar way. Margiela gives you part of the story and leaves you to figure out the rest.

The Tabi is still in the collection, Martin Margiela has still not given an interview, and the white label is still designed to be removed, just as Anonymity is a campaign built around a film that will never exist. In an industry that has spent the last decade rewarding visibility above almost every other quality, Maison Margiela has spent 38 years returning to the same idea in different forms: that choosing not to show everything can be a position of its own, and that a position held for long enough can become a legacy. 

Glenn Martens did not invent that idea; he inherited it from a designer who made himself invisible and left the Tabis behind as proof that the work could speak without him. With Anonymity, Martens has taken that same principle and placed it in a visual culture where being seen has become almost impossible to escape.

Cover Credit: Maison Margiela

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Earlier this year, precisely January 10, a Catholic priest, Fr. Guilherme Peixoto, led Mass at a Lebanese Catholic university. That same night, he played a sold-out set at one of Beirut’s most popular nightclubs. A group of Christian religious figures had petitioned to stop the concert, arguing that it violated Church teachings, but a Lebanese court rejected the request. 

Interestingly, most of the people who showed up were not practicing Catholics, and the man behind the decks was a 52-year-old parish priest from a village in northern Portugal.

Known globally as Padre Guilherme, Peixoto first forayed into electronic music in his early thirties, when he enrolled in a DJ school, reached out to producers and began making his own tracks. He eventually turned his parish into a venue for fundraising parties before the COVID-19 pandemic brought those events to an end. During that lockdown of 2020, he also began livestreaming weekly DJ sets, building an audience that stretched far beyond his parish. 

His connection to music has also followed him outside Portugal. As a military chaplain in Afghanistan, he organised social events for soldiers and DJed for them, and in 2023 he played before Pope Francis’ open-air Mass at World Youth Day in Lisbon. In 2025, Pope Leo XIV appeared at one of his raves and blessed the crowd. A year later, Peixoto performed at Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires to mark the first anniversary of Pope Francis’ death, where 150,000 people attended. 

He has since played festivals and clubs including Medusa Festival in Spain, Dreamfields in Mexico, Hï Ibiza and Electric Forest in Michigan, and has built an Instagram following of 2.7 million. His approach comes back to something Pope Francis often said: “Don’t be afraid,” and that the Church had to go “to the peripheries.” For Peixoto, the dance floor is one of them.

The Beirut controversy is worth examining because it gets at the tension around Padre Guilherme’s work. The Christian figures who sought to stop the concert argued that a priest DJing in a nightclub compromised the dignity of the vocation. Peixoto has consistently made a different case, pointing to the Church’s long history of meeting people where they are. 

In his view, that now includes the dance floor. Most people who attend his sets are not practicing Catholics, and some have no religious affiliation at all. They come for the music, but they also encounter a priest in a setting where they may not otherwise expect to find one. The Beirut court rejected the petition, and Peixoto has continued to perform.

Peixoto is not the only person trying to bring faith into electronic music. Topher Jones spent years building a career in EDM under the name King Topher, earning 200 million Spotify streams, placing tracks in the Billboard Dance Top 25 and playing Tomorrowland, while releasing music through labels including Republic Records, Atlantic, Interscope and Spinnin’ Records. 

Last year, he turned that experience towards Rave Jesus, a Christian EDM project launched through his own label, True Royals, in partnership with Sony Music. The Rave Revival Tour followed with 22 dates across North America and the UK in 2026, including Belfast and the Big Church Festival in West Sussex. 

Its title track, Rave Revival, describes the idea behind the project as “taking the energy of a revival and putting it inside a rave.” Jones entered the dance floor through music and then brought his faith into it. Peixoto started with faith and found his way to the dance floor. Their routes are different, but both are testing what happens when Christianity enters a space it has traditionally stood outside.

In Lagos, the relationship between faith and music already exists on a much larger scale. The Experience, an annual free all-night gospel concert convened by Pastor Paul Adefarasin of House on the Rock, takes over Tafawa Balewa Square each year. Half a million people attended the most recent edition. It is not a rave, but music, movement and a large crowd remain central to the experience. British Gospel artist Muyiwa Olarewaju, who has been involved with The Experience since its beginning, put the relationship between Black culture, Black music and gospel music more directly: “Black culture is at the heart of pop culture. At the core of Black culture is the pulsating rhythm of Black music. At the foundation of Black music, you'll find Gospel music.” The Experience has been making that connection at scale for 18 years.

The Afro-Gospel movement across Nigeria and the diaspora takes that relationship into everyday listening. Artists like Victoria Orenze and Judikay combine gospel with Afrobeats rhythms, making music that works as worship while still carrying the movement and energy of the genre. Gospel playlists on streaming platforms also reach listeners who may not be regular churchgoers, with praise mixes built around familiar Afrobeats tempos and danceable production. The distinction often comes down to the subject of the lyrics and the spiritual purpose behind the music. That is close to the audience Peixoto describes at his own shows, where people can come for the music without necessarily coming from a religious background.

These examples are different in almost every practical sense. Padre Guilherme is a Catholic priest playing in nightclubs, Rave Jesus is an EDM project built by a producer who moved from secular music into Christian music, The Experience is a massive gospel concert in Lagos, and Afro-Gospel is a genre that travels through streaming platforms. 

What connects them is the growing effort to take faith into spaces where younger audiences already spend their time. For some, that means the nightclub or festival. For others, it means a playlist that sounds closer to the music they already listen to. Padre Guilherme is part of that wider shift, and his work raises a question that extends beyond the Catholic Church: what happens when the places where people gather, dance and listen to music become places where faith can also meet them?

Cover Credit: Padre Guilherme

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Every few months, a post about Ethiopia’s calendar goes viral. Someone points out that the country is in 2019 while the rest of the world is in 2026, and the comments quickly fill with jokes about time travel, confusion about how the calendar works, and people asking if Ethiopians know something everyone else has missed. 

The post, typically, moves across timelines and group chats, creates a brief wave of fascination, and eventually disappears under the next viral story. What tends to get lost in the conversation is the more interesting question: why has Ethiopia kept its calendar after five centuries of globalisation, colonisation attempts and diplomatic pressure, while the Gregorian calendar became the standard everywhere else?

The Ethiopian calendar is a solar calendar derived from the ancient Coptic system, which itself developed from the Egyptian calendar that predates the Roman Empire. It has 13 months, with 12 months of 30 days each and a 13th month, Pagume, made up of five days or six in a leap year. The Ethiopian New Year, Enkutatash, falls in September on the Gregorian calendar. This year, it fell on September 11, marking the beginning of 2019 in Ethiopia. The calendar is seven years behind the Gregorian calendar from September to December and eight years behind from January to September. 

Ethiopia is the only country that uses this calendar for everyday civil life, with businesses, public holidays and other aspects of daily life organised around it, rather than keeping it only as a religious or cultural tradition alongside the Gregorian calendar.

The difference comes from a theological disagreement that dates back to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in 1582. Pope Gregory XIII introduced it as a reform of the Julian calendar, including a new calculation of the date of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel told Mary she would conceive Jesus. 

Meanwhile, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church did not accept Rome’s calculation. Its own dating of the Annunciation followed the Alexandrian tradition of the early Christian church, which meant there was no reason for the church to replace its existing calendar with one introduced by a Pope whose authority it did not recognise. Ethiopia kept the Coptic calendar, while the Gregorian calendar The Gregorian calendar spread globally alongside European influence, through trade, colonisation, diplomacy and the standardisation of international systems around European norms. 

Countries that had used other calendars gradually adopted it, sometimes by choice and sometimes under political or economic pressure. Ethiopia resisted European colonisation more successfully than most African countries, most notably defeating Italy at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. Its calendar remained in use through that period and continued afterwards, preserving a system tied to the country’s own religious and cultural institutions. 

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church had maintained its own traditions for centuries and did not regard the European system as something it needed to replace them with. In that sense, the survival of the calendar sits within a much longer history of Ethiopia maintaining its own institutions and traditions in the face of outside influence.

Calling Ethiopia “behind” assumes that the Gregorian calendar is the standard everyone should be using and that other systems are simply deviations from it. That assumption is worth questioning. The Gregorian calendar was a 16th-century Catholic reform that became the dominant global system as European influence expanded, and Ethiopia is one of the clearest examples of a country that kept its own calendar through that process. The seven-year difference that the internet treats as a curiosity is really the result of a disagreement that began five centuries ago and has never been settled.

The Ethiopian calendar is tied to the way time is experienced through faith, community and everyday life. Enkutatash, the Ethiopian New Year, is traditionally linked to the return of the Queen of Sheba to Ethiopia after her visit to King Solomon in Jerusalem, where she is said to have received jewels from him. The celebration includes flowers, singing and feasting, and coincides with the beginning of a new agricultural cycle. Pagume, the calendar’s 13th month, also carries its own prayers and practices as the year comes to an end. 

These traditions have developed alongside the calendar over centuries, shaped by Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity and the country’s agricultural life. Changing to the Gregorian calendar would therefore mean more than changing the number of the year. It would also mean moving away from a system of time that has been woven into Ethiopian religious and cultural life for centuries.

Ethiopia entered 2019, last week, on September 11, and in a few months the internet will probably discover this again. Someone will post about it, the jokes about time travel will return, and the conversation will move on to whatever comes next. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, meanwhile, will continue using a calendar based on a system it has followed since the sixth century. What looks online like a seven-year discrepancy is the result of a disagreement that began centuries ago and survived the spread of the Gregorian calendar across the world. 

Ethiopia has continued to use its own calendar in everyday life, keeping a system that connects its religious traditions, agricultural life and understanding of time. The next viral post will probably miss all of that.

Cover Credit: Enkutatash celebration

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