Collabs, size diversity and freaks – pretty much sums up fashion graduate Ogonna Mecelina Joseph’s graduation collection for Esmod Oslo.
“I am inspired by freaks, quirky personalities, any who doesn’t fit into the normal standards of fashion. And my aim with these clothes is to work with shapes and cuts that fits and looks good on any size from petite to extra large” she says.
This is just what we hoped to find when we went to check out the collections of this years graduates. Would anyone take on the task so neglected by the fashion business at large?
@oggo.joe is the label if you want to hook up with the designer on insta.
Storytelling is big in fashion and Ogonna wants to tell us other stories, those from the seedy underbelly of circus freaks and outcasts.
The print used in her collection is made from her own mood board and features among other things photos of two afro-american albino twins George and Willie Muse, born into a poor sharecropper’s family, and later kidnapped in 1899, forced to change their names to Iko and Eko and perform as circus freaks travelling around the states. Bizarre true story of a time when diversity was a crime.
“A sad story that got a happy ending after all,” says Ogonna. May she continue to tell stories with her designs in the yars to come.
All look-book photos: Igor Zaitcev, models from Heartbreak and Team Models
