Nigerian fashion brand UDIAHGEBI recently unveiled its Fall 2023 collection tagged MONUMENTA.
According to the creative director,
MONUMENTA is an ode to my formative years. Being fully conscious and aware by the year 2002 in Nigeria – a time when echoes of the past two decades still hung in the air while the noise of the new decade gathered momentum – a reasonable portion of my childhood was dominated by a mix of Films and Music from the preceding two decades and the current:
Elton John, Michael Bolton, Toni Braxton, Sade Adu, Whitney Houston, Madonna, Celine Dion; films like James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino, The Bodyguard, and a string of Spanish Telenovelas that set our hearts on fire through to the mid-2000s.
All of these Musicians and cinematic works of art were known connoisseurs of the kind of luxury, dreamy romances, and risqué fashion that grew to inspire my work. This collection seeks to remind us of simpler times, soaked in dreams of what we perceived as the “mysterious glamour and power of adulthood”.
We had the most vibrant romances in our heads, filled with glamour, grandeur and glass slippers.
Being overcome with nostalgia during the creative process of this collection, I pulled from the brand archives and created garments reminiscent of my earlier works. Dark colors, second-skin silhouettes, “barely there” risqué garments with edge-defying illusion cut outs, soft drapes, sequins, and delicate deliberate laces.
Pulling love elements from my childhood:
my Michael Bolton-obsessed father with his love for jackets with the soft inner linens that always felt like heaven; my mother’s love for prim short jackets, spandex tights, cowl necks, and delicate laces; my early obsession with plastic dolls and how it grew to birth my fascination for the femme form; I sought to tie these elements together to create dependable, sturdy, yet delicate looking garments and accessories that inspire feelings as much as they photograph well.
Brand: @udiahgebi