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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‍ru. did not plan to make music. In 2024, the young songbird, born Ru Robert, recorded I Think I Love You in Abuja, an intimate song drawn from a real experience, and shared it without a strategy or a rollout. 

The song found people anyway. A remake featuring Magixx followed, and between the two versions, the tracks crossed one million combined streams. She credits Abuja’s slower, more reflective pace for the sound she makes, which is smooth, soft and unhurried, a deliberate contrast to the energy of Lagos. 

Her latest debut EP, SILK, takes its name from the qualities she sees in the material: fragile yet strong, soft yet resilient. The five-track project moves through five different emotional spaces. In this chat with Deeds, we talked about her accidental start in music, what it took to be vulnerable on record, and why softness and strength can exist together.

Sophia From Deeds: For anyone reading this and discovering you for the first time, how would you introduce yourself and your music?

First of all, I'm just a girl, but I'm a girl who deeply loves my craft, who is learning, who is discovering herself and just doing that in front of everybody. I like to tell people that listening to my music or experiencing my songwriting is almost like taking a page out of my diary.  I take authenticity very seriously. I like to make every single time I write from a genuine experience. Sometimes not that I have had directly, but, you know, we live vicariously through other people, through stories we've seen, through the things that inspire us.  But for every time I write or I make music, it's always about a feeling I'm feeling, truly.  So honesty, authenticity, love, fun, life, faith. You know, basically everything that makes me is everything that's in my music. It's very intimate, I would say. 

You're from Abuja - not Lagos, which is where most of the Nigerian music conversation happens. How has that shaped who you are as an artist?

I would say that compared to Lagos, Abuja is. It's much slower. It's chill. Not slow to the point where nothing is happening, but almost like it's right in the middle. It's a very steady pace that you can count on, right? As opposed to the hustle and bustle and quick movements in Lagos.  Abuja is the kind of town that allows you to breathe, you know, really take things in, smell the roses, you know, romanticize your life. I feel like because of that pace, I'm able to apply the same, what should I say? Technique when I'm making music. It's almost like you can breathe when you're listening to me.  It's not the most fast paced and I believe that I still will be able to do that in the future. Maybe I will be. But I would say those are the elements from Abuja that have entered my music unconsciously. That intentionality, breath, you know, just smooth, still, chill vibes.

In Lagos, they don't have a chill. In fact, when I greet people in Lagos, they don't even answer me. I'm like, what do people mean? Is it that bad? Everybody's angry.  Nobody has your time.  There's no time to spare a smile. There's no time to romanticize anything.  A walk to work or a drive to work is literally that. There's no, oh God can interrupt me or something beautiful can happen along the way.  

You said your entry into music was almost accidental - 'i think i love you' started from a real-life experience. What made you decide to share something that personal publicly?

It is. I like to be honest about the fact that it wasn't a dream I had growing up or anything. It was literally a hobby I stumbled into in 2024 and I decided to give it a chance. I've always been the type of person that, you know, goes with the wind.  And if something sparks my interest, I'm going to give it my attention because I do believe that I'm being led a lot of times.  And so I just, I leaned into that and that's how I got here.

Like I said, I feel like I do my best work when I'm telling the truth. Right. So because music started out, or writing specifically started out as an outlet, as a way to express myself, that has always been the case.  So when I'm expressing myself and I'm able to put it into melodies, you know, give it a nice beat or something, it hasn't changed the fact that I was doing just that, expressing myself.  It's honest in that sense. It's why I would tell you're literally taking a page out of my diary, because I've literally put my heart out on the page. I've given everything to you, everything that happened or didn't happen.

Sometimes it's not necessarily that it happened to me specifically, but maybe it happened to someone in my life and I was there and I documented it and how I felt indirectly or how I feel like the person who was the main character felt. It's a lot of storytelling, sometimes it's not directly me, but, yeah, I'm always honest about those things. Well, as much as I can be given the circumstances. Yeah, I think I love you was definitely a personal experience I shared.

SILK is described as a tribute to women navigating different stages of life and relationships. When you were making it, who specifically were you thinking about - yourself, women around you, or something broader?

Yes.  Navigating, growing through those things.  Mostly it's about becoming. It was me because I was writing and sharing some of the questions I've been asking in this era of my life, you know, who is a woman?   From I think I love you to now.  The past few years for me have been a time of self discovery. You know, what is my purpose?  How am I supposed to act?  Who am I really?  What's the purpose of a woman?  Am I an afterthought?  What am I doing here, really? You know, these are the questions I'm asking. How do I deal with love? How do I interact with someone who loves me? How am I supposed to be with my friends? These are the questions that have boggled my mind.

Because then when you're growing into a young woman, you're kind of trying to build identity.  Especially in an industry like this, where it's like who you are is so important because everything you do flows from there.  So that has basically been the philosophy of this era, these questions.  And that's where the music came from. The questions themselves and the answers. I feel like I'm getting so far.

The EP blends Afropop, soul and alternative R&B without committing fully to any one of them. Is that a conscious creative decision or just how the music comes out?

It's literally just how the music comes out. I go with the wind, like I told you. So sometimes you hear an instrumental, you hear a sound, and it kind of tells you where it wants to go, what it wants to achieve.  And I like to think of myself as a collaborator or a partner with the sound. None of us are trying to outdo each other.  Everybody is trying to shine. We just follow each other's leads in our respective strengths, basically. So I like to complement the music as it complements my writing as well and my voice. So I basically just go with where I feel like it's leading me. It's never a conscious decision.

Most times when I start, like, I don't even know what I'm writing about. A lot of times I go to the studio feeling like, oh, I'm sad.  I'm in love today, and I want to write about this. Most times when I hear beats, it reminds me of a story. It takes me somewhere. Some of these instrumentals are so immersive and is why I love the producers I work with. They literally build walls with the sound that are able to draw you in and paint pictures so vivid you can write about them and people can literally experience them with you know?

'Woman' debuted at number 25 on Nigerian radio and was produced by Mr Eff and mixed by Johnny Drille. How did that collaboration come together? 

Mr. F actually came to Abuja. We had a mini camp when I was just starting our music. It was my first recording session ever, and he came here. We made a couple of songs. It was beautiful.  Johnny Drille, there's many things to say about him. After my helper in Jesus, then we have him. He's one of those people who is so genuine about music itself. There's just a lot to say.  I pitched to him. He loved the music and we made it happen. Beyond that, he's given me so many opportunities, you know, I've performed at two JRLs, I think, and he's just someone who has been so supportive, you know, supportive. You know, just encouraging me and telling me how good I am and how there's space for me, and I'm so grateful for him. I know you didn't ask me that, but. Yes, that's just who he is. How did it happen? A friend knew a friend, I guess. I honestly can't tell you because I'm not sure how I did it myself.

SILK as a title is specific. What does it mean to you in the context of the project?

To be honest, I chose that because I thought it was the perfect paradox. I told you I'm discovering myself. I've realized a lot of times that from people's perspective, you know, if you look soft, you know, as a baby, you know, you're maybe you're sensitive, you're soft spoken, they don't expect much from you in terms of strength or how you show up.  But Silk shows you that you can be both at the same time. It's soft to the touch. It's very shiny, sparkly. So you would think, oh, fragile.  But spider silk actually rivals still in strength. It's literally that strong.  So you can be soft, sparkly without, you know, sacrificing strength.  And you can be strong without sacrificing, you know, your softness.

It's almost like you can exist in these two worlds at the same time and still make the most of both, because they are still you. You are still you when you're soft. You're still you when you're strong, you know, and who you are is beautiful, period. I shouldn't have to hide the fact that I like pink or want fluffy stuff or glittery stuff, because I'm trying to show you that I'm strong or I'm mature, you know, I don't subscribe to those things. Silk was basically the perfect name because that is the story I'm telling with the music.

I am who I am. I'm loving fearlessly, I'm discovering the facets of myself. I'm a creative, strong woman, Silk basically encompasses everything I'm trying to say.  It's why it was the perfect title.

Where does the music go from here? What does the version of ru. after SILK sounds like?

Honestly, ru. right now I am just very grateful. ru. is accepting who she is. Sometimes you take these steps even while you're scared. It's not that I wasn't scared to show my soft side or be vulnerable.  I was, but I did it scared anyway. I'm very proud of myself because a step in the right direction, like, I'm getting even stronger. I'm growing so much more. I'm so excited for everything that's to come. The music I've been making, it's almost like I've turned this page and, you know, it just keeps going because there's just so much more. This is a chapter and I also can't wait to see how it unfolds in the future.

Cover Credit: bluenotnice

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Dave's A The Boy Who Played the Harp tour began on February 2, this year, in Munich, Germany, and will end on October 17 at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts in Surulere, Lagos, sparking widespread excitement among his Nigerian fanbase. 

Across 43 shows in Europe, North America, Australia and Africa, Dave has taken the tour through some of the biggest markets in his career before bringing it to Lagos -- the city his parents are connected to -- for its final stop. The venue itself carries its own significance, named after Nigeria’s Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.

Nigerian music has spent the last decade travelling outward, with Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tems and Davido among the artists who have taken music from Lagos to audiences around the world. At the same time, another part of that cultural exchange has been happening in the opposite direction. 

So many young artistes grew up in Nigerian homes on British streets, carrying both influences into their music without necessarily having to separate the two. Dave, real name David Orobosa Omoregie, is part of that generation. 

For this release, Dave seems to be quite proud of his Nigerian heritage. Wizkid appeared on We’re All Alone in This Together in 2021, not as a genre exercise but as part of a creative world that had already made room for that connection. Raindance, the only single from The Boy Who Played the Harp, features Tems and was filmed in Lagos. It became Dave’s first Billboard Hot 100 entry, with the video shot across Lagos streets in footage that could almost pass for a wedding before it reveals itself as a music video. Dave did not have to go looking for Nigeria. It was already present in the work, in his life and artistry. 

The Boy Who Played the Harp is his third album and his most ambitious project yet. Its title references the biblical tale in 1 Samuel 16, when King Saul summons David, the young shepherd, to play the harp and soothe him when an evil spirit troubles him. Dave draws a deliberate connection between his biblical namesake and his own life, most clearly on the closing track: “My ancestors, my ancestors told me that my life is a prophecy. And it's not just me, it's a whole generation of people gradually making change.” 

The album opens with a church organ and ends with a verse about generational inheritance. In between, Dave writes about religion, guilt, masculinity, sexual assault, fame and what a man owes to the generation that comes after him. Marvellous confronts his own shortcomings, while Fairchild, featuring Nicole Blakk, recounts experiences of sexual assault and abuse rooted in male ignorance and places Dave within that wider conversation about male responsibility. My 27th Birthday asks what he has done to deserve what he has been given. Across the album, the questions are personal, but they keep returning to the people and histories that came before him and the generation that will follow.

Chapter 16 features Kano, bringing together two generations of British rap. Kano brings a connection to an earlier generation of British rap, while Tems on Raindance brings together two artists from the same diaspora whose music developed in very different places. James Blake and Jim Legxacy are woven into the album from the production itself, while Fraser T. Smith, who produced Psychodrama, returns here. The choices feel considered because the album itself asks to be listened to as a complete work, at a time when much of the music industry is built around singles, playlists and the constant demand for something new. The Boy Who Played the Harp debuted at number one in the UK with 73,799 album-equivalent units in its first week, giving Dave his third consecutive number one album.

The venue for October 16 and 17 adds another layer to the Lagos shows. Dave will close a 43-date world tour in a venue carrying the name of one of Nigeria’s most important literary figures, bringing the run back to the country his family comes from. There is a natural connection between the setting and the questions that run through The Boy Who Played the Harp, an album concerned with inheritance, faith, identity and what one generation leaves for another, even if Dave has not presented the venue choice as a direct extension of those themes.

Lagos sent something to London decades ago: families, culture and ways of living that continued to evolve within the diaspora. For artists like Dave, that Nigerian identity exists alongside the British environment that shaped them, rather than separately from it. His Lagos shows bring those two parts of his story into the same place. 

[NB: Tickets for October 16 and 17 are available through Jetron Ticket, ranging from ₦30,000 to ₦500,000. The rear balcony sold out in June, and the tour that began in Munich will conclude in Lagos on October 17.]

Credit: Santan Dave

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The Brothers Breaking New Grounds With Electronic Music-fusion

It was a cloudy Saturday afternoon in Lagos, and I was on my way to FāëM’s studio in Ikeja. Luckily, it didn’t rain. When I got there, I was welcomed by Demii, one half of the fraternal producer duo FāëM. I met his twin sister Oreoluwa in their living space, which also doubles as the space they use for their live shows, before heading into the studio. Fapelo, their older brother and the other half of FāëM, joined us shortly after.

FāëM (pronounced “fame”) consists of two biological brothers, Fapelo and Demii, who people often assume are twins due to their striking resemblance. Their music odyssey began with Fapelo, who had grown uninterested in studying architecture. He started writing a fictional web series in University, without knowing where the hobby might take him. “I was just writing and sharing on WhatsApp, and it was blowing up. I was just writing the series on impulse, while being fully committed to school. I started sharing them, one person saw it and shared it with another, and then it became something bigger.  It got big enough that a bunch of people who came to meet me one day, I still remember it, were like, ‘ Bro, you need to take this up. Forget architecture, forget any other thing.’
“Oh, at that time, I had already started DJing. But it was more of a side thing. A lot of people knew me for music. They didn't even know me for writing.”

FāëM found their feet treading towards the electronic dance music scene they now dominate back in 2015. One afternoon, they got back from school and started watching the popular music channel, Trace TV. That brief leisure time felt like a moment of escape as they got lost in the thrilling BPM-spiked soundscapes of global EDM heads like David Guetta, Avicii, and so on. Soon, what started as discovering new music eventually became something Fapelo wanted to share with the people around him.

“I started DJing because I wanted to share my music with people, not really because I wanted to start a career out of it. My siblings and friends started listening to electronic music. I won’t say it was as a result of us, but more like because it was good music. Then I started hosting events, and my brother joined because we lived together in the same hostel and shared the same music taste. So that’s how it started,” he said. 

Disc jockeying became a career for Fapelo, in 2017, and, for Demii, the following year. Despite House Music -- and EDM, in general -- being a minority scene in Nigeria, the brothers kept playing their special gigs, finding more people who believed in their community in no time. At the same time, they had a constraint. People attending their shows were fast getting weaned off the EDM sound; it just wasn’t sticking. 

Their rescue? Afro fusion. They spun around Afrobeats songs, remixing them with EDM production. 

Sitting inside their cozy, artsy, home studio, they played one of their special remixes, Agogo. I know EDM is already electronic, but nothing best describes that sound piece than electric. It felt the same way to their audience too. It felt even better to them, when they both realized that they had landed a blueprint for a fusion that actually works the crowd. 

“The first time playing Agogo at Group Therapy felt electric because that was the first time we saw our listeners understand what we were doing. A feeling we couldn’t forget. We obviously felt it from the crowd. We are forever grateful for that.”

Their magnum opus, so far, is their debut album, WAWDH -  What Are We Doing Here, released in February this year.  The 16-tracker album is inspired by everyday human emotions, with a special focus on individualism. 

Demi describes the period that inspired the album as an epiphany. “Late 2024, going into 2025, we had this crazy epiphany that we were kind of lost and doing the wrong things. So we had to cut down a lot of our habits and a lot of the things we were doing. We had to retract, basically. 

“And it came with us, taking some time off. We realized we had to close ourselves off for a bit and try to find some reason in that solitude. And through that solitude, the same question kept recurring: what are we doing here? What are we actually doing here?”

The album packs guest appearances from Tsuni, Lunamic and GhostwriterMel, as the soundpiece places greater emphasis on soulful, uplifting and introspective tonal planes. “I would want you to listen to the project and maybe something would catch you off guard,” Fapelo quips. “It’s not necessarily what you would expect from an Afroelectronic producer. Out of all the music we made for the project, there are maybe four songs that you can properly play in a rave. 

“The songs are more introspective. I would say they’re more for listening in the morning, listening in traffic. It’s just more like you, you know, yourself. It’s like a self-theme, because you’re asking, ‘What are we doing here?’ But really, it’s ‘What am I doing here?’ because it was a personal experience.” 

Interestingly, Fapelo and Oreoluwa who's more of a third member of the group as vocalists on 'WAWDH?!' while their manager appears in the intro.

“My sister and myself are on a lot of the songs. A bunch of our friends actually helped us. We also met some of them in the course of making the project. So a lot of the music, even the album itself, is happening right now. The main music videos, the album itself, the live show. Everything is happening right now.”

For the duo, one thing this record taught them is the importance of letting go and not fixating on things beyond their control, they admit. 

For them, they are vocal about making music that they, or anyone, could listen to at any age. Quality is something they care deeply about, and this was demonstrated in their recent project with K1 De Ultimate. Most of the songs on that project had been completed two years before its release, while a few were finished earlier this year. 

Beyond the music, what stays with you after speaking to FāëM is how grounded they are. For all their talk of epiphanies, solitude, and self-discovery, what the brothers keep circling back to is simple: kindness. They believe the world would be a better place if people simply chose to be kind to one another, and it's a philosophy that quietly runs through everything they do, from the community they've built around their sound to the way they speak about their audience and each other. As FāëM continues to carve out space for Afroelectronic music in Nigeria, it's clear their mission isn't just about the sound they're pioneering; it's about the people they hope to reach along the way.
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Cover Credit: Stylish Sinner

Jomi Marcus-Bello started Wafflesncream in Leeds, in 2008, alongside his brother and a shared obsession with skateboarding. He brought it back to Lagos, built a community on an island with no skate parks and roads that make skating a daily negotiation. He converted a former colonial prison into a skate park, and fourteen years later became the first African skate community to design the Adidas Superstar ADV. 

The shoe - grey upper from Lagos Island's industrial landscape, translucent pink outsole from the sky near the sea, breathable panels for the actual humidity it will be skated in- is now in the hands of the global market. 

Success, by his own definition, is paying salaries and keeping the lights on. Catching up with Deeds ahead of the global release, we spoke about building without investors, what the Adidas collaboration actually meant, and why Freedom Park is the most honest thing Wafflesandcream has brought to life.

Sophia for Deeds: For anyone reading this and discovering you and waf. For the first time, how would you introduce yourself and what wafflesncream is?

I think we are just storytellers trying to speak about Lagos, Nigeria, and Africa as a whole. I think we're just trying to create beautiful products and tell incredible stories, in and around the average skateboarder's life and their ambitions and their tastes. If anybody's engaging well for the first time, they'll see that we've been. We're literally from grass to grace. We've had no investors, but a few assists here and there. We made it with people. Nobody ever makes it on their own. It’s been an up-and-down story. I think it's a story of the African youth and their ambitions and his inner jokes, his exploration, through the eyes of the skateboarder.

You started waf. in Leeds in 2008, then brought it back to Lagos. What made you come back and build a skate scene in a city with no skate parks, no pavements, and roads that make skating feel like a daily negotiation?

I was exposed to it by my mom. I think it was when I discovered it properly and started to enjoy the lifestyle and the friends I made. It was something that I wanted to continue. I didn't want to have to move back to Nigeria and then have it stopped.  I felt like I wasn't the only one that had this kind of mindset. I was just trying to look for my tribe. I met a few people and we started designing and enjoying the new kind of, like, way of thinking around products and lifestyle.

In over fifty years of the adidas Superstar, no African skate community has ever designed one. When Adidas came to waf., what was your first reaction, and what was the first design decision you made?

Honestly, our first reaction was gratitude, we were flattered but we'd also been down this road before. We had worked on international projects with brands like Coke and Guinness in the past, so we already had a sense of what it meant to represent something of that scale. Those experiences gave us the confidence to walk into this the right way, not overthinking it, not trying to overdo it or force something that wasn't authentic. We treated it like any other collaboration, because that's what got us here in the first place.

When it came to the silhouette, choosing the Superstar felt obvious. When you're working with a brand like adidas, there's something powerful about starting with the original, their classic. And it just so happened that around that time, adidas was already leaning back into the Superstar story, so it felt like the right moment.

But the real question for us was: how does Lagos actually show up in a shoe?

A lot of people expected us to go the obvious route, yellow, Ankara prints or loud colors. But we wanted to capture what Lagos feels like, not just what it looks like on the surface. Lagos is humid. Our biggest competition isn't another sneaker brand, it's slippers. Palm slippers. Because comfort here often means kicking off your shoes. Our streets, our environment, they're not always generous to your feet. So we had to design with that reality in mind.

The toe cap already gives you that shell-like protection, but we made sure to think through breathability too, that's why we used mesh on the sides and through the inner concave, so the foot can breathe. We added an elastic support inside to hold the foot securely, not just for skating, but for movement in general, running, catching a ball, whatever life in Lagos demands.

The gray represents Lagos Island, where the skate park is, and Surulere too. Those spaces gave us so much when we were coming up, letting us skate under the stadium staircase, generous with the room they gave us to exist and create. So the gray carries different patinas, almost like cracked leather, telling that story.

You opened Lagos’s first skatepark at Freedom Park in 2024, on the grounds of an old colonial prison. That detail is not accidental. What does it mean to build something for young Lagosians in that specific space?

I mean, it's crazy with Lagos Island. It's crazy because that's where we first used to congregate to skate. Freedom Park security guards were not really kind to us. They would seize our boards. They would do all sorts because they saw us as a nuisance. This was happening around 2015 or 2017. But the beautiful thing was that Covid hit, and we had formed a sort of relationship. They asked us if we could work on a skate park. We were like, yes, of course we can. The crazy thing is that we started doing a little bit of history on the grounds where the skate park is actually built.  

Let me start with this. Where our skate shop is the warden's office, where you get sentenced to that prison or convicted to, and that is where you're going to serve. Our skate shop is actually where people were getting checked in then. The skate park is where they get stripped down. It was the metal workshop where people would smelt metal. So when we're digging and back then, the metals were very heavy, we're digging to, you know, we had to sand fill. I don't want to get into the technicalities of the construction, but we did find jail gates. We found metal parts. We also found different things that showed the history of the space, which was kind of crazy. And it's in the Freedom Park Museum at the moment.  We found out that there was a protest at that place as well, where they were.  

 The prisoners were not being taken care of properly. They revolted on that very land.  So that land has a rebellious spirit to it. They broke down the wall. Then they had to bring in bricks from London to rebuild it.  And then also it's beautiful. It's like a concave. It feels like you're in a jungle. We made sure that we did not interfere too much with the trees and plantation; we just simply inserted the skate park in there. I know Awolowo served in that prison, so he must have gone through our shop at some point. I know other prisoners were political prisoners who were there too. It was a prison for 100 years.It's crazy because we are in the warden's office, and where they went to get disciplined is now a place of leisure and commerce.

waf. has always sat at the intersection of skateboarding, fashion, music, art, and community rather than being just a skate brand. Was that always the vision, or did it evolve?

I think it's one in itself.  Skateboarding because it's a culture. It's not just an activity. Just like belonging to any other culture, it’s not just about the language. It’s the way you dress, what you eat, the respect you show, how you conduct yourself, the festivals, the tone, how you raise a child, and your overall POV on life.

I think every culture deserves that same diversity and complexity. You can be a skateboarder, but you can also be a photographer or be into fashion. It’s more of an attitude and a language than just a physical thing.

The campaign for the Superstar ADV was shot entirely on Lagos Island, featuring waf. community members - not imported faces or global ambassadors. How important was that decision to you?

I mean, it's everything in it. We wanted to be truly authentic to ourselves.  Like I said. I think when the Collaborator comes, I don't think it's when you start to try and over-imagine. I think that's when you just have to simplify things. It was an opportunity to show where we are from, who we are authentically. Adidas has been an amplifier and a good collaborator. I think what Lagos Island has done for us is legacy stuff. It's stuff that hopefully our children's children will be able to enjoy. I think it's only right to always reflect that.  No Space in Lagos or Nigeria gave us a chance. Lagos Island did. It gave us a home; it gave us a facility; it gave us the training ground. It gave us friends; it gave us meaning; it gave us aesthetics. It gave us everything. We don't need to import faces if we want to tell our stories. I think if we're going to import faces, they will be people that have come from within it, if that makes sense. It’s not just Lagos Island people.  Lagos Island in itself as a location. A lot of people who we started with have kind of branched out, and they still carry waf for Lagos Island in their hearts.

You have said that African youth shouldn’t rely on international brands to develop products for the African market, that they should do it themselves. Does this adidas collaboration complicate that position or confirm it?

It doesn't complicate it. I think I'll be stupid if the world is global. It was a global village. I'd be stupid if we said, oh, adidas, come and make shoes here. We simply don't have the technology or the discipline. We don't have the infrastructure or. The infrastructure is not a priority for this market. Adidas is a global brand. They've worked with countless people. But I think even if adidas has paid its dues, it has done local things to kind of prove themselves. They created athletes, then also the consideration for them allowing us to play with the silhouettes is also localizing the international shoe, even down to material choices, because leather is leather, regardless of where you are in the world. But how its approach is local. We did our best to kind of localize that thinking, if that makes sense. It's also equally as valid. I think you can also embody something that materials can be imported, but the idea can be localized.

Fourteen years of building without institutional backing or mainstream recognition, and now a global Adidas collaboration. What do you want the young skaters in Lagos who watched you build this from nothing to take from this moment?

First and foremost, we haven't arrived. I think let's not get it misconstrued. We still have our challenges and we're still working as hard as we can to get to where we want to go. So I don't want anybody to feel like this is a pedestal. This is like where you want to be. You might not even have this collaboration and still thrive. We're grateful, we're happy. It signifies growth and, you know, elevation or whatever that comes with this. But that is not the goal. It's the cherry on top.  It's not the cake. Do you understand? 

So I would employ every young person to build their cake, to build ideas. First and foremost, make sure that the people around you are supportive. Because you can't make it for yourself. You can have your own POV. You don't listen to people that don't get it.  I think it's a very bad trap and sometimes your parents and close family and friends may not get it. Yes, find your tribe. I think you should also learn to support each other.  It's not just a take, take. I think the beauty of waf is that we've given, giving, giving. And if this is what we take from it, then so be it. But we give and we continue to give and support. Support your friends, support your industry. When I say your industry, I mean like the tailors that you work with. Support the people.  Like no one's watching.  Yeah, so far they're part of your process, they're part of your community, celebrate them. When you're doing anything, bring your tailor, bring them to the launch, let them see what you're doing. There's a weird thing in Nigeria where everybody tries to gatekeep and we don't do as bad as other societies, but where people don't want to share processes and share findings. I have a theory.  If two people are struggling with the same thing, you are competing. You're both idiots. If you're struggling, you should both be supporting each other, leveraging off. You know, whether you're buying T-shirts, getting blanks together or printing different things, whether you're bringing in the shipment with the same shipper so it can be cheaper for you, find collaborators.  It doesn't have to be Adidas, WAF for it to be a collaboration. We collaborate every step of the way, down to staff, down to thinking. I think young people need to realize that they're not alone.  You can't build alone, and instant gratification is cool because you want to feel good, you want that dopamine hit. But at the same time, you need to find out why you're doing it.  

So when these big wins come, you don't get lost in the sauce.

And we have been lost in the sauce before.  We think we've arrived and it has been shot up in a. I know that it's a marathon.  It's not a.  It's not some sort of.  There's no end goal. You're going to create and design till your dying day. I know a lot of designers and creators that are still creating to the year 80. This is not a job. This is a mental shift. I don't know how intense people are. But me, I say you'll be able to lose a finger for it or even die for it. These are ideas. This is a little bit of you're putting into the world and you don't have to always be the one to do it.  You can find someone to support. 

There's a weird romanticized version of you being the hero all the time. You can be someone's Robin. You don't have to be Batman all the time. You can be the sidekick, because, trust me, Batman cannot function without Robin or Alfred. You can be Alfred. You can be Uncle, Uncle Phil to Fresh Prince. You can be May to Spider Man. You understand everybody has a support system.  Ninja Turtle, Splinter and April. You understand you need at least two or three or four people who are ready to go down with you. But are you going to be the person taking the risk or are you going to support the person taking it? I'm sorry, I'm getting passionate about it because it's like an opportunity to speak to a wider audience when it comes to humanizing this thing.  Understand that nobody can save you. I can't make you rich because there's a thing in Nigeria where everybody wants to make it in life and be rich.  But what does even success look like for you?  Success to us may not even be money. 

Money to us is not the ultimate success. Money is good and we want to make money, I understand: you are not alone, and you cannot build alone. sustainable so we can keep going. But for me, so far all our guys are getting paid a salary. The rent is being paid and we can create the next thing and make a little cherry on top. To me, that's successful.  I don't believe in, I must wear a diamond chain. All of a sudden all of us are like balling. That's not success for us. Success is being able to do it again and again and again. And it's a privilege to understand that. Also creativity is a privilege and a calling to kind of do for people. To buy into your point of view. 

What comes next for waf. - beyond the Superstar ADV?

I don't want to give it out because then it spoils the fun.  But I'll say this. We've not really been in the studio for a very long time. We got lost chasing the wrong things and working with the wrong opportunities. So I think we're back in the studio now and we want to tell more stories. So expect more product offerings and stuff from us. I think it's going to be fun. I think, let's see what happens. We're still having fun. We have more stories to tell. 

Cover Credit: Wafflesncream

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Everyone knows the Hollywood flick, Venom. A lot more remember the lead character, Bane. Some others know the actor who played the role as Tom Hardy. And even fewer people know anything about his identity as the rapper Tommy No. 1. 

Before Tom Hardy was fighting Batman or sharing a body with an alien symbiote (for those who have seen Venom), he was a young Londoner trying to break through as a rapper. In his teens, Hardy began writing and rapping, eventually teaming up with his friend Edward Tracy, who went by Eddie Too Tall. By 1999, the pair had made an 18-track mixtape called Falling on Your Arse, with Hardy rapping as Tommy No. 1 and Tracy producing. It was recorded in Tracy's bedroom, rough around the edges and never properly released at the time. Almost two decades later, Tracy found the recordings and posted them online in 2018.

Hardy had already moved towards acting by then, but the music never completely disappeared.

In a 2011 BBC interview, Hardy said he had started rapping at around 14 or 15 and had recorded plenty of music that had never been released. He even joked that it might eventually “come out in a film” or “come out in a character somewhere.” Looking back, that sounds less like a joke and more like a preview; because Hardy's relationship with hip-hop kept finding ways back into his career.

It also wasn't just nostalgia for his teenage years. Hardy stayed connected to Britain's music culture, including relationships with artists from the grime/hip-hop scene, and appearances connected to mixtape culture. Music remained something he could return to rather than something he had abandoned.

You can hear that influence in the way he acts. Hardy doesn't always deliver dialogue like ordinary dialogue; he plays with cadence, rhythm and pauses almost like a rapper working around a beat. Bane's deliberately measured delivery in The Dark Knight Rises gives his lines a strange musical quality. Eddie Brock and Venom constantly interrupt one another, switching tone and tempo as if two performers are battling for the same microphone. Then there is Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders, whose speeches can move from a low murmur to a rapid burst before landing on a punchline.

The characters are different but his fascination with delivery keeps showing up. That is perhaps what happened to Tommy No. 1. He didn't disappear; he got absorbed into the actor.

Even Venom gave Hardy another route back to hip-hop. Eminem's “Venom” became part of the first film's soundtrack, while Hardy's own musical interests continued to develop behind the scenes. 

Years later, he would take another major step by collaborating with Czarface, eventually appearing as the masked rapper Frankie Pulitzer in Knull & Void. 

Then came 2026, when the secret became almost impossible to keep.

Hardy released Czarface Meets Frankie Pulitzer, a full-length rap album with the hip-hop supergroup Czarface, featuring artists including Method Man and Busta Rhymes. And, in perhaps the most obvious collision between his two careers, Hardy even brings back Bane's voice on one of the tracks.

Suddenly, that old line about the music eventually appearing “in a character somewhere” feels prophetic.

The bedroom recordings with Edward Tracy. Tommy No. 1. His connection to grime and hip-hop. The spoken rhythm of Bane, Venom and Alfie Solomons. And now an actual rap album.

For years, Hardy seemed to have moved on from the rapper he once wanted to become. Maybe he didn't. Or he just found a bigger stage for him. But Tommy No. 1 didn't really disappear. He learned how to act — and remembered why he started.‍

 Cover Credit: Wikipedia 

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The veteran Nollywood actor, Olu Jacobs, has passed away at 84, following a battle with dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLS). Olu Jacobs was a true champion of Nigerian cinema having graced blockbuster films like Ashanti (1979), One Fine Day (2015), Smoke And Mirrors (2008), The Royal Hibiscus Hotel (2017), and many more. 

His legacy is woven into the fabric of Nollywood and he is rightly regarded as one of the father figures of the industry. Olu Jacobs is respected and admired by many. Among some of his last films before his downhill battle with the degenerative brain disease is The Royal Hibiscus Hotel, a story conceived by Mo Abudu among others and directed by Ishaya Bako. The Nigerian comedy film stars Olu Jacobs as Richard alongside his wife, Joke-Silva, who was cast as Augustina.

The couple has been married since 1989 after a chance meeting on stage where they both happened to be casted for a Wole Soyinka’s play called Jero’s Metamorphosis. Joke Silva said about their first moments together in an interview on Your View, a breakfast show by the Nigerian television station, TVC, "For him, it was love at first sight, but for me, it wasn’t." She talked about his reverence in the Nigerian film industry saying, "Everyone knew the great Olu Jacobs was coming (to work on Jero's Metamorphosis), except me." 

The Great Olu Jacobs, also fondly known as The Lion of Lufodo, had an academic background in acting and film. He went to The Royal Academy Of Dramatic Arts, a drama school in London with notable alumni like Wunmi Mosaku of Sinners, David Warner of Titanic, Aimee Lou Wood of The White Lotus, Cynthia Erivo of Wicked and many other international film stars. He would go on to appear in movies with Hollywood stars in the 1970s and 1980s before choosing to return to Nollywood.

Jacobs is widely acknowledged for the impact his years-long career had on the industry and he has gotten multiple awards on multiple occasions. One of his notable awards was given to him by the then-Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 where he was awarded the national honour of a Member of the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to recognise his service to the Nigerian entertainment industry. 

Joke Silva and Olu Jacobs are one of the most beloved and celebrated couples in Nollywood. Silva shared with Dr Stephen Akintayo on his Leadership podcast about how much influence Jacobs had in the decision to keep her stage name as Joke Silva: "He said it was already a brand and he didn’t want it to affect me later." The couple who have been married for more than 35 years have two children; Olusoji Jacobs and Gbenga Jacobs. 

They also founded a theatre and film company called Lufodo Group. A prestigious company who manages the historic Glover Memorial Hall named after a former colonial administrator and former Governor of Lagos, Sir John Hawley Glover. The hall hosted Sanwo-Olu in 2022 as he dished out interest-free loans to Nollywood filmmakers. Lufodo also partnered with Netflix to train Nigerian actors which was unsurprising for a company with two acclaimed actors at its centre. 

Joke Silva has been open about the struggles she encountered as a wife married to someone with dementia with Lewy Bodies. She first opened up about the actor's condition in 2021 in an interview with Jideonwo Chude,  “He is dealing with issues, and it's been going on for a couple of years. It's a degenerative disease that affects the brain, and it's almost like a kind of Parkinson's, but that's just it's the brain that it affects, so you don't see the shaking and things like that, it just affects the person."

In another interview with actress Nancy Isime, she opened up about her feelings and how the illness affected her family. "There was a point of acceptance for me that everything happening is reality and it is like the person I married, 80 percent of the time is no longer there." In the same 2023 interview, Silva added, "So in this journey of dementia now, it is like I am looking after my father. The husband I knew is no more and there for me but this man that is here is someone I still love."

After his son announced the death of Jacobs some days ago, condolences came from every big name in Nollywood and beyond the film industry. The Actor's Guild Of Nigeria (AGN), Lagos State Chapter, issued a statement mourning the cultural icon of African cinema, Mercy Johnson described him as a legend, Mo Abudu of Ebonylife said of the actor: "Uncle Olu was more than an extraordinary actor. He was a presence, a voice and a master of his craft." More condolences came from Toyin Abraham, Kate Henshaw, Richard Mofe-Damijo (RMD), Funke Akindele, among others. 

Political figures like Nigerian Presidential aspirant,  Peter Obi, described Jacobs in a' statement posted on X as a symbol of excellence in different artistic fields. The president of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, joined other Nigerians to give him a tribute, referring to him as a "giant in the Nigerian creative industry."

The death of Olu Jacobs is one that was felt by everyone. The Lion of Lufodo as his first son, Olusoji Jacobs called him, has gone to rest. History would forever cherish the legacy of the man that captured people on screens and in real-life, from Nigeria to Britain.

Cover Credit via Olu Jacobs’ Instagram 

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Drill music began on Chicago’s South Side turf around 2010, shaped by the American rapper Chief Keef and a generation of artists who followed him into a sound marked by dark production, heavy bass and lyrics rooted in street life. 

When it travelled to the UK, artists reshaped it around their own cities and experiences, creating a version that developed its own identity. Nigerian drill inherited both sounds, from the Chicago original to the UK interpretation, and for a while, many of the artists making it wore that influence openly. The sound came from somewhere else, even as the people making it were Nigerian.

Kiing Lu, born Lucas Emeodi, grew up around Nigerian indigenous music and hip-hop, two sounds that had very different histories from the drill taking shape overseas. He’s publicly argued that Nigerian artists could borrow from American and British rap without losing their own identity. “No matter how we try to sound like the Americans or the UK rappers, you cannot take away the fact that you are African,” he said. “If you cannot infuse your roots into your music, then you are losing touch with what makes one African.” His new single, “Get Up (Dance),” puts that idea into practice, bringing drill into conversation with a distinctly Nigerian musical tradition.

To understand what the single is doing, it helps to understand where Fuji comes from. The genre was formalised by Sikiru Ayinde Barrister in the late 1960s and early 1970s, developing from Were music performed by Yoruba Muslims during Ramadan. Its foundation is percussion, call and response, talking drums and participation, with the music built around a crowd as much as the person leading it. Fuji has absorbed other sounds over the years, including hip-hop in the 1990s, but those influences have been worked into a musical tradition that remains distinctly Nigerian.

Drill comes from a different musical tradition. It developed in Chicago around a sound built on heavy bass, sparse production and a darker lyrical tone before the UK gave it another identity. Bringing it together with Fuji therefore involves more than placing familiar Nigerian sounds over a drill beat. Fuji gives the music a different sense of rhythm and participation, while drill brings a harder, more restrained framework around it. “Get Up (Dance),” featuring Liya, Bkay EastGaad and Nextee, sits in that space, with the Fuji influence providing a clear link between the two sounds. The result is less about making drill sound Nigerian on the surface and more about seeing what happens when the two musical traditions are allowed to shape each other.

Kiing Lu’s interest in this question comes from years spent working inside the Nigerian music industry. After leaving Jos, he spent seven years in Ghana learning the business side of music without releasing music of his own. He returned to Nigeria and worked in Alaba distributing records before moving through label roles and eventually becoming Head of Promotions and A&R at Universal Music Nigeria. He also gave TG Omori one of his earliest opportunities when the director had no portfolio, before building Speedplug Promotions and Captive Music around artists including Tems, Tiwa Savage and OdumoduBlvck. 

When he rebranded as Kiing Lu, he put more emphasis on A&R and executive production, taking on the role of a curator and connector. His stated philosophy, “impact first, money follows,” comes from a career spent largely behind the scenes, where the work has been about finding people, developing ideas and helping them reach an audience.

There is a long history of Nigerian music doing something similar with sounds from elsewhere. Highlife took elements of Western jazz and palm wine music and developed into something distinctly West African. Afrobeats drew from American R&B, Jamaican dancehall and several strands of Nigerian popular music before becoming a global sound of its own. Fuji also absorbed hip-hop in the 1990s, with musicians finding ways to work the new influence into an established local tradition. 

Now, Nigerian drill is going through its own version of that process. The sound came from outside, but the artists making it have been finding ways to place it within Nigerian rhythms, language and street culture. “Get Up (Dance)” is one example of that ongoing process, bringing Fuji and drill together on a record that asks what Nigerian drill can sound like when its influences are allowed to meet on local terms.

Cover Credit: Kiing Lu

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When Charles Onyeabor speaks about his late father, there is a certain tenderness in how he experienced such a generational legacy.

Between 1946 and 2017, his late father, William Onyeabor, the genius electro funk inventor who created era-defining records in his prime, carved a reputation that remains a consistent muse for the young musical warlock. Today, Charles’s life’s work is a testimony of a man preserving a golden memory while creating his own.

When his father was alive, the music was important, but it still lived close to home. It belonged first to the man he knew as a parent before the world framed him as one of African music’s most enigmatic visionaries.

After his death, that music began to return to Charles with a different weight.

“When he was alive, I knew his work was important, but I don’t think I fully grasped just how far-reaching his influence was,” Charles says. “After his passing, I started to see his music through a different lens, not just as his child, but as someone witnessing how the world connects with what he created.”

That shift sits at the heart of Charles Onyeabor’s ongoing artistic journey. In an earlier phase of his career, the conversation around him naturally circled his father’s legacy. It was almost unavoidable. William Onyeabor’s name carries an unusual charge in African music history, not only because of the brilliance of the records, but because of the mystery, restraint and spiritual seriousness that surrounded his life after music.

For Charles, the task was never as simple as continuing a family name. It was about understanding what that name had become in the world, while figuring out what part of it belonged to him.

Now, the question around Charles is no longer only whether he can preserve his father’s legacy. It is whether he can live with that inheritance while successfully allowing the world to appreciate his own voice.

For years, William Onyeabor’s music has been described through words like futuristic, spiritual, experimental and original. His records created a world of synthesizers, groove, gospel feeling and electronic imagination that later generations would come to receive as prophetic. Yet, to Charles, the man behind that sound was also a strict father, a disciplinarian, a diligent workaholic, a believer in Jesus Christ and someone who insisted on truth no matter its cost.

“He was extremely intentional, a real workaholic and a go-getter,” Charles says. “He was also a strong believer in Jesus Christ and a very straightforward man who never hesitated to speak the truth, even if it meant losing what he valued most.”

For an icon who barely let the world into his private life, Charles believes the world only experienced a slice of William. He remembers something more immediate; the father who shaped him and his brothers, Chika and Emeka, with discipline, faith and resolve; a man who believed that words had to be backed by action.

“One of the things he always said that stuck with me is, ‘Something must kill a man,’” Charles recalls. It ultimately became one of Charles’ first lessons in conviction.

For Charles, music has become one of the places where that lesson continues to unfold, although his return to it was not immediate.

Before his father’s passing, Charles was not pursuing music seriously. He loved singing at home and around friends, but for nearly 18 years, even that casual relationship with music disappeared. His father’s death unsettled him. It pulled him back towards sound, although without much clarity. At first, there was grief, responsibility and confusion. It was a trinity of experiences that weighed him down as he navigated being the duty-bearer for his father’s transcendence.

“After my father passed, I started thinking a lot about his legacy and how to keep it alive,” he says. “The challenge was, I didn’t really know how to go about it. I felt quite lost and unsure of my direction.”

The stillness of the COVID period softened that burden. With the world slowed down around him, Charles began to softly accept that purpose.

However, in his case, while the Onyeabor surname already suggests originality, experiment, timelessness and a standard that can feel impossible to satisfy, he still resists the idea of being trapped by it.

“There’s pressure no doubt,” he says. “When you carry the Onyeabor name, people already have expectations before you even say a word or drop a note. That can feel heavy sometimes because you know what that name represents. But I don’t let that pressure box me in.”

That tension also feeds his recent single, “You Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” a record built from defiance and self-belief. The title may first register as swagger, but Charles frames it as something more intimate. “No matter what you say or do, I’m still making my money, I’m still valid. I’m still doing my music my way. You can’t break me,” he quipped.

In staying true to himself, Charles is also not rejecting his father’s world.

Obviously, William Onyeabor came from a different era, without digital stores, social media, Amapiano, or the current machinery pushing African pop across the world. So, blindly copying him would be betraying the core building block of the Onyeabor legacy: originality.

“When I’m doing music, I don’t think about how my father did his own music. I just let everything out naturally. His own time was different. The groove was different. There was no Amapiano back then. There were no digital stores or social media. So I can’t use his era to compare this era.”

Still, the Onyeabor DNA still manifests in Charles’ instinct for groove, his interest in live instrumentation, his ear for melody and his belief that music should feel human. He is constantly experimenting, still searching for the sound that feels most original to him. He does not see that uncertainty as weakness. For Charles, it is part of the process.

“If you know me well, you will know that I have it in me,” he says. “And it’s gradually unleashing.”

A major turning point came in Bologna in 2024, when Charles opened for Ruger during his Europe tour. The performance mattered, but what stayed with him most was the soundcheck. Ruger was not working with a DJ set. He had a full band, and everything about the arrangement felt alive, deliberate and controlled. It changed his perception of stage performance.

“It wasn’t a DJ set, it was a full band, everything tight, intentional, alive,” he says. “That moment made me fall in love with live performance on a deeper level.”

Since then, he has been focused on building his own band and developing a richer stage sound. It is one of the clearest ways his path begins to separate from the mythology around his father. William Onyeabor’s legacy was not built around the stage in any conventional way, but Charles is drawn to the immediacy of performance, to the feeling of meeting an audience in real time.

Opening for acts such as P-Square, Otile Brown, Abrantee, May7ven and Ruger has taught him that audiences are moved by presence and emotional truth.

He has also continued to remain active on stage, opening for Offset and Odumodublvck on their European tours. The thrill of performing his music live continues to be an energy that propels him.

“Performance is really about energy and honesty more than anything else,” he says. “It’s not about trying to impress people. It’s about making them feel something.”

Ultimately, Charles sees himself within the wider global rise of African music. And, for him, artists like his father are proof that African music had long been ahead of its reception. The world may now be listening more closely, but the imagination was already there.

“African music getting global attention now is powerful, but it’s not new. Artists like my father were already creating sounds that the world is only just catching up to.”

In the end, Charles Onyeabor is writing his own story one chapter at a time. His surname is more than just nostalgia. It has become a movement. While his music is still unfolding, there is no finished reinvention here, no attempt to present the son as a fully formed answer to the father’s legend. Instead, he’s telling a story of a talented chap working through grief, pressure, memory and daredevil ambition, trying to discover what the Onyeabor name can mean in his own voice.

“I want Charles Onyeabor to represent growth, evolution, and fearlessness,” he says. “Someone who took the foundation and pushed it into new spaces, to the next level, creatively and culturally.”

At the heart of that dream is still legacy. Like his late father, Charles wants to leave something that will last for his children, the same way his father left something that still speaks to him.

“Something that speaks long after I’m gone. For my kids, just like my father did for us.”

Cover Credit: Charles Onyeabor

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When Charles Onyeabor speaks about his late father, there is a certain tenderness in how he experienced such a generational legacy.

Between 1946 and 2017, his late father, William Onyeabor, the genius electro funk inventor who created era-defining records in his prime, carved a reputation that remains a consistent muse for the young musical warlock. Today, Charles’s life’s work is a testimony of a man preserving a golden memory while creating his own.

When his father was alive, the music was important, but it still lived close to home. It belonged first to the man he knew as a parent before the world framed him as one of African music’s most enigmatic visionaries.

After his death, that music began to return to Charles with a different weight.

“When he was alive, I knew his work was important, but I don’t think I fully grasped just how far-reaching his influence was,” Charles says. “After his passing, I started to see his music through a different lens, not just as his child, but as someone witnessing how the world connects with what he created.”

That shift sits at the heart of Charles Onyeabor’s ongoing artistic journey. In an earlier phase of his career, the conversation around him naturally circled his father’s legacy. It was almost unavoidable. William Onyeabor’s name carries an unusual charge in African music history, not only because of the brilliance of the records, but because of the mystery, restraint and spiritual seriousness that surrounded his life after music.

For Charles, the task was never as simple as continuing a family name. It was about understanding what that name had become in the world, while figuring out what part of it belonged to him.

Now, the question around Charles is no longer only whether he can preserve his father’s legacy. It is whether he can live with that inheritance while successfully allowing the world to appreciate his own voice.

For years, William Onyeabor’s music has been described through words like futuristic, spiritual, experimental and original. His records created a world of synthesizers, groove, gospel feeling and electronic imagination that later generations would come to receive as prophetic. Yet, to Charles, the man behind that sound was also a strict father, a disciplinarian, a diligent workaholic, a believer in Jesus Christ and someone who insisted on truth no matter its cost.

“He was extremely intentional, a real workaholic and a go-getter,” Charles says. “He was also a strong believer in Jesus Christ and a very straightforward man who never hesitated to speak the truth, even if it meant losing what he valued most.”

For an icon who barely let the world into his private life, Charles believes the world only experienced a slice of William. He remembers something more immediate; the father who shaped him and his brothers, Chika and Emeka, with discipline, faith and resolve; a man who believed that words had to be backed by action.

“One of the things he always said that stuck with me is, ‘Something must kill a man,’” Charles recalls. It ultimately became one of Charles’ first lessons in conviction.

For Charles, music has become one of the places where that lesson continues to unfold, although his return to it was not immediate.

Before his father’s passing, Charles was not pursuing music seriously. He loved singing at home and around friends, but for nearly 18 years, even that casual relationship with music disappeared. His father’s death unsettled him. It pulled him back towards sound, although without much clarity. At first, there was grief, responsibility and confusion. It was a trinity of experiences that weighed him down as he navigated being the duty-bearer for his father’s transcendence.

“After my father passed, I started thinking a lot about his legacy and how to keep it alive,” he says. “The challenge was, I didn’t really know how to go about it. I felt quite lost and unsure of my direction.”

The stillness of the COVID period softened that burden. With the world slowed down around him, Charles began to softly accept that purpose.

However, in his case, while the Onyeabor surname already suggests originality, experiment, timelessness and a standard that can feel impossible to satisfy, he still resists the idea of being trapped by it.

“There’s pressure no doubt,” he says. “When you carry the Onyeabor name, people already have expectations before you even say a word or drop a note. That can feel heavy sometimes because you know what that name represents. But I don’t let that pressure box me in.”

That tension also feeds his recent single, “You Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” a record built from defiance and self-belief. The title may first register as swagger, but Charles frames it as something more intimate. “No matter what you say or do, I’m still making my money, I’m still valid. I’m still doing my music my way. You can’t break me,” he quipped.

In staying true to himself, Charles is also not rejecting his father’s world.

Obviously, William Onyeabor came from a different era, without digital stores, social media, Amapiano, or the current machinery pushing African pop across the world. So, blindly copying him would be betraying the core building block of the Onyeabor legacy: originality.

“When I’m doing music, I don’t think about how my father did his own music. I just let everything out naturally. His own time was different. The groove was different. There was no Amapiano back then. There were no digital stores or social media. So I can’t use his era to compare this era.”

Still, the Onyeabor DNA still manifests in Charles’ instinct for groove, his interest in live instrumentation, his ear for melody and his belief that music should feel human. He is constantly experimenting, still searching for the sound that feels most original to him. He does not see that uncertainty as weakness. For Charles, it is part of the process.

“If you know me well, you will know that I have it in me,” he says. “And it’s gradually unleashing.”

A major turning point came in Bologna in 2024, when Charles opened for Ruger during his Europe tour. The performance mattered, but what stayed with him most was the soundcheck. Ruger was not working with a DJ set. He had a full band, and everything about the arrangement felt alive, deliberate and controlled. It changed his perception of stage performance.

“It wasn’t a DJ set, it was a full band, everything tight, intentional, alive,” he says. “That moment made me fall in love with live performance on a deeper level.”

Since then, he has been focused on building his own band and developing a richer stage sound. It is one of the clearest ways his path begins to separate from the mythology around his father. William Onyeabor’s legacy was not built around the stage in any conventional way, but Charles is drawn to the immediacy of performance, to the feeling of meeting an audience in real time.

Opening for acts such as P-Square, Otile Brown, Abrantee, May7ven and Ruger has taught him that audiences are moved by presence and emotional truth.

He has also continued to remain active on stage, opening for Offset and Odumodublvck on their European tours. The thrill of performing his music live continues to be an energy that propels him.

“Performance is really about energy and honesty more than anything else,” he says. “It’s not about trying to impress people. It’s about making them feel something.”

Ultimately, Charles sees himself within the wider global rise of African music. And, for him, artists like his father are proof that African music had long been ahead of its reception. The world may now be listening more closely, but the imagination was already there.

“African music getting global attention now is powerful, but it’s not new. Artists like my father were already creating sounds that the world is only just catching up to.”

In the end, Charles Onyeabor is writing his own story one chapter at a time. His surname is more than just nostalgia. It has become a movement. While his music is still unfolding, there is no finished reinvention here, no attempt to present the son as a fully formed answer to the father’s legend. Instead, he’s telling a story of a talented chap working through grief, pressure, memory and daredevil ambition, trying to discover what the Onyeabor name can mean in his own voice.

“I want Charles Onyeabor to represent growth, evolution, and fearlessness,” he says. “Someone who took the foundation and pushed it into new spaces, to the next level, creatively and culturally.”

At the heart of that dream is still legacy. Like his late father, Charles wants to leave something that will last for his children, the same way his father left something that still speaks to him.

“Something that speaks long after I’m gone. For my kids, just like my father did for us.”

Cover Credit: Charles Onyeabor

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Shilo Sanders has never allowed himself to be defined by a single lane. Moving unapologetically as himself, Sanders has carved out a distinct identity that extends far past the gridiron. Beyond his athletic journey, he has emerged as a powerful cultural voice, creator, and motivational speaker using his platform to remind a new generation that no matter the setbacks or shifts in life, following your dreams and refocusing on your goals makes anything possible.

His trajectory serves as a blueprint for adaptability and resilience. Transitioning from elite athletics to dominating culture, fashion, and public speaking, Sanders proves that a career path isn't a straight line; it’s a commitment to continuous growth. His story reinforces a singular message: when you remain grounded in your purpose, pivot with confidence, and relentlessly pursue your passions, no vision is out of reach.

That authentic drive makes his role as a campaign face for PLAY Palm Angels a natural alignment. Debuting its Fall 2026 line, PLAY Palm Angels originates from the elevated luxury brand Palm Angels, bringing its signature rebellious DNA into a new, street-driven era. Designed to show up directly where culture is happening across fashion, music, sport, and digital spaces the brand operates as much like a community as it does a collection.

“Being part of PLAY Palm Angels from the beginning has been exciting. Palm Angels has been one of my favorite brands for years, so to be part of this next chapter and help introduce PLAY Palm Angels is a dream come true.”  Shilo Sanders

Accessible Luxury at an Approachable Price Point The defining element of PLAY Palm Angels is its commitment to inclusive design and widespread accessibility. While the heritage Palm Angels main line operates in traditional high-fashion luxury where signature hoodies and tracksuits carry high-end price tags PLAY Palm Angels makes the brand's iconic aesthetic genuinely attainable.

The line introduces the concept of "obtainable luxury" without compromising quality or design integrity. Featuring graphic tees ($60–$80), fleece hoodies and track jackets ($100–$150), and daily essentials starting as low as $45, the brand offers a competitive range that bridges luxury streetwear directly to everyday youth culture.

The Debut Fall 2026 Line Sanders stands out as a focal point in the debut campaign alongside a curated group of creators, athletes, and digital personalities who embody the PLAY mindset. The collection features approximately 60 apparel and accessory styles for men and women, rooted in the relaxed, effortless energy of Venice Beach and Southern California.

The assortment centers on relaxed silhouettes and washed palettes, spanning heavyweight hoodies, graphic tees, washed fleece, denim, lightweight outerwear, and knitwear designed to move seamlessly from pickup games to late nights. Vintage-inspired graphics and collegiate references blend naturally with recognizable Palm Angels details woven throughout the apparel and accessories, prioritizing everyday wearability over short-lived seasonal trends.

For Sanders, the launch isn't just another fashion co-sign; it's a reflection of where culture is actually headed. By stepping away from the traditional athlete playback and anchoring a brand built on accessibility, he isn't just wearing the shift in luxury fashion he's helping write the manual for what comes next.

Cover Photo: PLAY Palm Angels

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Crowned TikTok Best-dressed Guy by Vogue, Wisdom Kaye has seen many big fashion moments. From collaborations with big labels like Crocs and Adidas to having a Met Gala debut in early 2026, the Nigerian-American fashionista is presently having a major moment across global fashion. 

He proved his mettle at the kickstarter event for New York Fashion Week, Harlem's Fashion Row's 19th Annual Awards Show, where he clinched the Virgil Abloh Award. 

After receiving the award from LVMH, Kaye gave a speech about how much the moment meant to him and how he was once a boy with an iPhone camera and a dream. "I never thought that with an iPhone and the corner of my room that I would inspire people all over the world,” he said, tucked in his navy pinstripe suit and aviator-themed reading glasses. 

Kaye built his fanbase across high fashion, just from styling ludicrous things on the internet like fonts, or countries, and even animated shows. 

One of my favourite moments of Wisdom Kaye was his behind-the-scenes look on his YouTube channel of how he styled the solar system. 

Kaye’s style of edits is heavily modern and alt. Music, jump cuts, and a silly sense of humour adorn his uploads on social media. A lover of the Chrome Hearts symbol and elegant fashion, Kaye represents effortless style. He is a proud poster-face of global Black fashion, one opening doors that were previously closed to creators like himself. 

The Virgil Abloh award, sponsored by LVMH, honours fashion creators who carry the late fashion designer's creative ethos. Other recipients of the award include Issa Rae, in 2022, A$AP ROCKY, in 2023, Teyana Taylor, in 2024, and Usher, in 2025. 

Some notable people were also given their flowers at the ceremony. Harlem's Fashion Row honoured Erykah Badu with the Fashion Icon Award for her bold, maximalist, and risk-taking style, Jahleel Weaver who was the deputy creative director of Fenty from 2019 to 2021 was awarded with Stylist Of The Year, and Brandon Blackwood was crowned Designer Of The Year. 

Beyond an award night, it puts Black fashion creators under a spotlight, a place that is not credibly accessible due to the worsening industry classism, racism, and colourism. 

Kaye, who was also recently featured in an Old Navy commercial with Cardi B, recognizes this privilege: "I recognize that not everybody has the same privilege that I do.” 

Cover Credits: Photo by Max Tardio, Edited by Wisdom Kaye

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Céline Dion feels like an idolization of our 2000s. One of her biggest hits and best-selling singles, My Heart Will Go On, was recorded for the blockbuster Hollywood flick, Titanic, in 1997. She has also soundtracked other movies like Disney's Beauty And The Beast and Up Close and Personal in 1996. And that’s barely just the surface to scratch with her accolades over the decades.

Other of her fan favourites include songs like; Power Of Love, Before You Loved Me, and It's All Coming Back To Me Now. Dubbed the Queen of Ballads, she is the youngest of 14 children and she wrote her first song when she was 12. 

Recently, Céline Dion struggled with a rare neurological disorder called Stiff Person Syndrome. The singer was told she could never sing again. A 2024 documentary about her life, I Am: Céline Dion showed her opening up about her 2022 diagnosis: "If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl.”  She promised to never stop singing. 

On Saturday, Dion later returned to Paris, at the Plénitude Arena in Nanterre, to much love and admiration at the opening night of her five-week residency in a statement black dress and diamond jewelry. It's no surprise that fans had camped out to watch the star perform her first sold-out live concert in six years.

Mid-show, Céline Dion got emotional - a testament to a six-year struggle with the nightmarish possibility of never singing again. She has one of the most powerful voices in the industry, and has sold a lot of records and dominated charts. 

Seeing an invincible figure break down gave fans a vulnerable look into everything she has gone through with her diagnosis.  "I made a promise to be back on stage. Singing for you. Singing for me, Singing for life,” Dion said, muffling tears. And she did it! 

She pummeled through with hits like Because You Loved Me, The Power of Love,  My Heart Will Go On, All By Myself, and Courage - a song that was recorded after the death of her husband, René Angélil. She performed more of her other classics to a crowd of more than 30,000 people that night, proving why she is one of the highest-grossing female artists of all time. 

According to John Hopkins Medicine, the rare neurological disorder called Stiff Person Syndrome causes severe muscle spasms and, in other cases, symptoms include unsteady gait, slurred speech or double vision. The syndrome is common in people around 40-50 and it can come in different types.

In the 2024 documentary, we saw how the disease affected the once potent voice that earned her awards and adulations. SPS gave her strong muscle spasms that left her with broken ribs. 

The 58-year-old is also an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. She goes through life's blocks with strength and confidence, whether she’s battling grief from her husband's death or anxiety from her neurological diagnosis. Céline Dion is always going to be Céline Dion, irrespective of circumstances that societal conditioning might see as a disability. Céline Dion would go on and on. 

Cover Credits: Robin Galiegue

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In December 2025, at the Streamer Awards, American streamer-cum-designer Kai Cenat announced he was going into fashion. He took nine months away from the most subscribed streaming career on Twitch, flew to Italy, learned to sew, studied textiles and came back with a collection. 

Last Saturday, Cenat’s Vivet Collection 1 had its inaugural show at New York Fashion Week, attended by Ms. Lauryn Hill, Law Roach, DDG, Karrahbooo, PlaqueBoyMax and the full AMP crew. The show was also livestreamed globally.

The nine months matter because of what Cenat left behind to spend them. In October 2025, he had just surpassed one million Twitch subscribers. His final broadcast before the hiatus, Mafiathon 3, featured Twitch CEO Dan Clancy and LeBron James. He stepped away from all of it. The YouTube video he posted in January 2026 was titled "I Quit," but what he said he was quitting was not streaming. "I quit overthinking. I quit staying in my head about the goals I have and whether they're going to work or not. I want to push limits to see what I can truly create in life." 

He travelled to Italy to study textiles and document the brand's denim manufacturing process, learned to sew, and attended the Louis Vuitton and 424 runway shows at Paris Fashion Week Men's in January 2026 with a Vivet journal in hand, connecting with Pharrell and Guillermo Andrade. Law Roach became his fashion industry mentor. 

He documented the process across vlogs, posting journal pages, leather swatches, handwritten notes, Polaroids from a sewing shop and factory floors as the collection took shape. Select orders of Vivet Collection 1 include a printed copy of the journal. The brand is 100 percent owned by Cenat through VIVET APPAREL LLC, registered in Marietta, Georgia, with no outside investors and no corporate backing.

Cenat did not claim to be a fashion authority. He found people he could learn from, including Law Roach, Pharrell and Guillermo Andrade, and he listened. What matters is that he spent nine months learning the process before showing anyone a single piece. He did not need to draw every design himself or lead every part of the execution for that time to count. “This is not me sticking my name on a brand and money-grabbing,” he said in the “I Quit” video. His decision to spend nine months working on Vivet before launching it gives that claim some weight. He returned to streaming in July, pulling over one million combined peak viewers on his first broadcast back, and continued building Vivet alongside it.

Collection 1 is 20 pieces across men's and women's, covering tops and knitwear, bottoms, footwear and accessories. The aesthetic is dark and graphic-heavy, with bold tribal-style shirts, leather pieces including a cargo jacket, slim-fit leather pants and a leather button-down, chunky boots and a raglan zip-up jacket. The ornate cross-like logo runs through the collection as a recurring motif, and prices range from $20 to $1,195, available immediately through a see-now-buy-now model purchased directly from the livestream. The models who walked the runway held two worlds at once. 

Alton Mason, one of the most recognisable faces in high fashion, walked alongside Duke Dennis, Raysian Boy, Marlon, Giovanna Ramos, BruceDropEmOff and Siebe: the fashion industry Cenat spent nine months trying to earn credibility inside, and the internet community that already believed in him before the first stitch was sewn.

Ms. Lauryn Hill in the front row at a first-time designer’s debut says a lot about the scale of attention around the show. Law Roach, whose mentorship shaped the collection and whose eye helped Cenat understand what he was building toward, was also there. The show was livestreamed rather than invitation-only, giving the audience that has followed Cenat throughout the process a way into the presentation. 

Whether or not he designed every piece himself or handled every part of the execution is beside the point. The important thing is that he did it. It is still too early to know if Vivet will become something significant in streetwear, but Cenat has already put serious work into the project. 

Cover Credit: Kai Cenat

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