4 ★ FTWeekend 22 February/23 February 2020
A suit of dark blue
or grey, over a white
or blue shirt: suchis the professional
man’s prisonuniform, circa 2020
Why can’t men
suit themselves? S
ome years ago I was at a
Christmas party with my
father, when we saw a white-
haired Brit in a three-piece
suit of deep-green tartan.
The suit, obviously bespoke, was
glorious, and I said as much to my
father, a bit of a clothes horse himself.
Indeed it was, he replied. “But how
long until your friends are sick of
looking at it?”
The remark neatly captures a
problem for men who aspire to dress
well and uniquely. If you wear clothes
that look good enough to merit a
second glance, on their next outing
your social circle can only think: there’s
that one again. It takes some cunning
to keep things fresh.
In our times, however, this problem
rarely comes up, least of all for suits. In
men’s clothes of even the lowest degree
of formality, we live in a moment of
near-absolute conformity. On the Tube
or the subway, to the degree that there
are suits to be seen at all, 90 per cent of
them will be dark blue or grey, worn
over a blue or white shirt, open collar,
with brown or black Oxfords,
carelessly polished at best. Such is the
professional man’s prison uniform,
circa 2020.When one breaks this code, people
are not so much alarmed as puzzled.
My favourite suit is a large-print black-
and-grey plaid number with a thick
green stripe. It is hardly bold but it
ain’t blue, either. It evokes one of two
responses: “Nice suit! Wow!”, said
slightly too loudly, or a hesitant “Nice
suit?”, the question mark hanging in
the air and demanding some sort of
explanation. “I love the green, don’t
you?” I mumble.
Consider in this context the fate of
the double-breasted suit. It flatters
almost everyone, making thin men
look athletic and fat men broad and
prosperous. Too bad — too formal, too
old-fashioned, in any case too much —
double-breasted suits have all but
disappeared. I own two and love them,
but they mostly stay in my closet,
because I don’t care to spend my days
explaining to my colleagues why I’ve
chosen to put on such a thing.
The contemporary lack of
imagination is so complete that a
flannel suit (as opposed to the standard
twill) counts as a daring style choice,
when half a century ago The Man in
the Grey Flannel Suit (as seen in the
film of the same name) was the very
emblem of company-man conformity.There have been,
admittedly, a few lame
attempts to break out.
There is the trend of the
past five years or so of
putting peak lapels on a
single-breasted suit, an
attempt at a more
“contemporary” formality.
It manages the rare double
of ugly and dull at the same
time. Peaks work on the
more acute angle of the
lapel of a double-breasted
suit; on a single-breasted suit, they are
vaguely reminiscent of the fins on a
1950s Cadillac.
Another example: the sports jacket
with soft shoulders, in a subtle plaid,
paired with khakis in a timid attempt
to make sense of the “business casual”
non sequitur. A warning: the man in
this get-up, worn with an open-necked
shirt and loafers, is a McKinsey
consultant, and he has come to
fire you.
I was thinking about all this the other
day as, idly scrolling through my
Instagram feed, I came across a rust,
brown and blue jacket of thick wool
from the Neapolitan tailor Dalcuore.
Love is not too strong a word.I was preparing to call my credit-card
company to have my limit raised when
I asked myself: when would I wear it?
I am a journalist with two young
children. I don’t have the dough to buy
anything I will wear only once or twice
a year. I spend my working weeks with
bankers and businesspeople, and my
weekends dragging children to
gymnastics classes and birthday
parties. I concluded that the jacket
would have to stay in my fantasy life,
where it belonged.
Or perhaps not. What has happened
to men’s clothes is, of course, just one
relatively trivial example of the bait-
and-switch of the past 50 years, when
new tyrannies in manners, politics and
the arts have been packaged and sold
as liberation and free thinking.
“Informal”, “casual” and
“comfortable”— all code words for
“Get back to your cubicle and shut
up, drone.”
Why should I feel I have no occasion
to wear something beautiful, a bit
formal, a bit out of the ordinary? Why
should I need an occasion at all?
Working men, to the barricades.
All you have to lose is your khakis.[email protected]Robert Armstrong
Style
Style
T
he sacred groves that nestle
into the outskirts of
Oshogbo in south-west
Nigeria are a rare entity. At
one time, every Yoruba
town had a remnant of virgin forest
where locals would come to worship the
Orisha (deities), but many have now
beenengulfedbyurbanisation.
Last November, the Lagos-born fash-
ion designer Kenneth Ize visited the
Unesco world heritage site for the first
time. It was a revelation. “My aunt lived
just around the corner to this beautiful
place but I never came here,” the 29-
year-old laments. “It’s not that we don’t
value our culture in Nigeria, there just
isn’t the same level of awareness. Art
anddesignasabusinessissomethingwe
as Africans are really only beginning to
tapinto.”
West Africa is home to a rich and
diverse tradition of textile-making that
is becoming as scarce as the sacred
groves. Techniques such as hand weav-
ing, which remained largely unchanged
since the 15th century, have been
replaced by mechanised looms. “We
were made to think that everything
from the west was the best, that
machines are [superior to] handcrafted
things, and we started losing our own
heritage,”saysIze.
His label is dedicated to preserving
that heritage, drawing on a network of
textile artisans across Kwara, Kogi and
Lagos making adire (indigo resist-dyed
cotton cloths) and handwoven aso-oke
(top cloth), which he transforms into
elegant tailoring in unexpected combi-
nations of colour and pattern: a batik
blazer in tangerine is paired with trou-
sers cut from aso-oke in an aubergine,
tealandcyancheckmotif,whilepleated
shirts are printed with stripes that grad-
uate like stratum from olive and
veridian to hibiscus pink and corn-
flower. Warp yarns are often left fringed
at the hems of trousers and overcoats —
aKennethIzehallmark.
Ize launched his eponymous brand at
Lagos Fashion Week in 2013, but took a
two-year hiatus to complete a masters
in fashion design under the tutelage of
Hussein Chalayan at the University of
AppliedArtsVienna.Hehadlivedinthe
Austrian capital on and off since the age
ofsevenwhenhislatefather,acivilserv-
ant,fledNigeriaasapoliticalrefugee.
Less than five years after returning to
Lagos to relaunch his label, he has beengamble paid off: “I went from working
by commission to eight stockists. For
Spring/Summer 2020 I almost doubled
my stockists again.” In just one season,
Ize’s turnover more than doubled from
around€60,000to€150,000.
Such a dramatic increase in demand
meant that Ize needed to begin produc-
ing some of his garments in Italy. “It’s
sad, but asa-oke is really delicate and
tailoring is not part of our DNA in
Nigeria, although that’s starting to
change with universities offering
courses in fashion design,” he says, cit-
ing a lack of infrastructure as another
reason for the recalibration. An esti-
mated 46 per cent of Nigerians don’t
have access to electricity, and busi-
nesses are often forced to use diesel-
powered generators, which choke the
Lagosairwithacridsmoke.
“I’mnotgoingtomakeaclient’sjacket
like that,” says Ize. “The government
needs to realise the value of art to the
economy and bring it to the forefront —
create proper apprenticeships, tourism
and so on — rather than just thinking,
‘Howcanwesellmoreoil?’”
Despite the challenges, Ize is commit-
ted to producing locally. “Everything
that can be done in Africa — weaving,
batik, tie-dye, anything artisanal — will
be done here.” Beyond ready-to-wear,
he has plans to expand into interiors
and open an education centre, which
will focus on aso-oke weaving in the
hopes of making it as synonymous with
NigeriaastartanistoScotland.
Ize’s AW20 collection — which shows
on the opening night of Paris Fashion
Week on February 24 — is based on the
things he witnessed aged around four
while attending Catholic services in
Lagos with his mother. “Even after all
the time I spent in church, I still can’t
remember a single verse from the
Bible,” he says with a mischievous
laugh. “But I do remember my mother’s
clothes.ShewasveryexperimentalwithNigeria’s new
Interview| Shortlisted for
the LVMH Prize and about to
show in the French capital’s
fashion week, Kenneth Ize
talks toLiam Freemanabout
his influences and ambitions
From above:
Kenneth Ize
spring/summer
2020 collection
photographed in
Osun-Osogbo,
NigeriaAbove right:
designer
Kenneth Ize
Vincent Thibault;
Manny Jeffersonfashion star
shortlisted for the LVMH Prize (last
year) for young designers, accrued
major retailers including Browns in
London and Ssense.com in Montreal,
and debuted a womenswear line with
Naomi Campbell and Liya Kebede at
Arise Fashion Week in Lagos. Later this
month, Ize will make his Paris Fashion
Weekdebut.
“I noticed Kenneth’s work immedi-
ately;it’salmostimpossiblenottopause
in front of all these colours, these deli-
cate fabrics, but also the smile and self-
confidenceofthisyoungdesigner,”Jean-
Paul Claverie, a LVMH Prize jury mem-
ber and adviser to LVMH chief execu-
tive Bernard Arnault, recalls of his first
encounter with Ize in Paris. “He doesn’t
take the easy way out and is [devoted
to] authenticity and the fight to source
andproducelocallyinNigeria.”
Ize’s big breakthrough came in Janu-
ary2019,whenhetookariskbyexhibit-
ing his menswear collection at a friend’s
apartment.“IpanickedbecauseIwasn’t
surehowtogetindustrypeoplethere,so
I posted a photo of the showroom on
Instagram and some press and buyers
started messaging me,” he says. The‘I’m not a business person;
everything I know I’ve
learnt from looking andlistening on the job’
her elaborate three-piece suits in lemon
and lime and big shoulder pads. When
everyone lined up to give thanks — see-
ing all these head wraps and jewellery —
itwaslikeafashionshowtome.”
The clothes in the collection are sim-
ply cut — suits, trousers, shirts — allow-
ing the textiles to take centre stage. Col-
ourways take cues from traditional
Nigerian cuisine, such as the dark green
and golden yellow of egusi soup. Ize will
introduce silk crepe and knitwear for
the first time and continue to explore
Austrian lace and asa-oke. The latter is
incredibly time-intensive — a collection
sees Ize design around 35 variations of
the cloth, and it takes roughly 24 hours
over the course of a week to weave
enoughforajacket.
In addition to buyers and press, Ize is
hoping his Paris debut will attract the
attentionofathirdcriticalgroup:poten-
tialinvestors.“Thisshowisabouttelling
people that Kenneth Ize is open to out-
side investment,” he says. “I’m not a
business person; everything I know I’ve
learnt from looking and listening on the
job. The reality is you need money in
ordertogrowanddevelop.”FEBRUARY 22 2020 Section:Weekend Time: 20/2/2020 - 18: 30 User: paul.gould Page Name: WKD4, Part,Page,Edition: WKD, 4 , 1