Fashion

‘Hey Stranger’: Nola Black Debuts New Fashion Collection With A Short Film

Nigerian contemporary slow fashion womenswear brand, Nola Black, has released a fashion film for its new collection Hey Stranger. Inspired by the pandemic, the new line takes you through all the emotions felt on an individual and collective level in the immediate pandemic and post-pandemic era. The collection is divided into three phases – disruption, […]

Culture Custodian Editorial Team

5 years ago

‘Hey Stranger’: Nola Black Debuts New Fashion Collection With A Short Film

Nigerian contemporary slow fashion womenswear brand, Nola Black, has released a fashion film for its new collection Hey Stranger. Inspired by the pandemic, the new line takes you through all the emotions felt on an individual and collective level in the immediate pandemic and post-pandemic era.

The collection is divided into three phases – disruption, deconstruction and rediscovery. Like the name, the first phase uses multiple fabrics in varying iridescent tones and hues to highlight the complete disruption that happened to the world when the pandemic started. The synopsis for the first phase of the fashion film Hey Stranger, Evol 1 reads:

“We are isolated in order but all is in disarray. A solitude that strengthens the core and promotes
togetherness. The forced break, connoted by the silence that comes when the scraping & clawing to be with others comes to a halt. An odyssey to stillness, exploring the infinite worlds within. Alone
together, even our solitude is intertwined together through the big little screens. A reminder of our
individual existence to achieve collective destiny.”

Then, there is the second phase, the deconstruction, that had us questioning everything as our world and ideas unravelled. According to the synopsis:

“Home is what my mind presents to me. In the physical, four corners of certitude, like time, the room loses boundaries, everything is moving. My thoughts, tucked away, home is where they creep out. It is calm outside, chaotic within. My home disorganised, showing me my thoughts in view. The screams are deafening though silent. Home is where I go in my mind, where I am reminded that time is temporary. Mind and space intertwine, everything is morphing, I am becoming one with my room. In the confines of these walls, sojourned here in my psyche, they blend into one.”

Rediscovering, the third phase, comes with an epiphany, a moment of sweeping answers, telling you about yourself, a bloom. The new line Hey Stranger pays homage to the various emotions throughout the entire process with colour tones that move from a dreary earthly tone to bright distinct colours indicating a sudden bloom. Design details such as empty holes of different sizes to spiral-shaped elements, distinct proportions, intricate sculpting, and sometimes draping further illustrate the concept of the new collection. The film concludes:

“Surrounded but alone and alone but not lonely, in the companion of oneself. Your innermost musings gushing out at you at full speed, displaced due to the inability to live out your contemplations, you’re stuck in a dreamlike state. Sequestered, you are afforded time to re-examine yourself wholly. The mind is exalted through independence, recenter you to your path. Moments of deconstruction of all the ideas you had once mastered, this journey is continuous and infinite, unrelenting evaluation of self and worth. This process is individual and solitary. I am a stranger/unfamiliar to myself. A disruption is underway then the inevitable outcome of your perpetual solitude happens. A presence of oneness, are-discovery. Hey stranger.”

Directed by Arinola Olowoporoku, produced by Ifedayo Olowoporoku, the fashion film features actors Tsakute Ladi Jonah and Adun Osilowo who were styled by Cheche Uduma. Photographers on the project are Fisayo Agunbiade and George Fredrick Wey, who is also the cinematographer.

Watch the fashion film below: