Idris Balogun is hitting his stride in the City of Light. He’s just moved to Paris to head Lacoste’s menswear design team, under Pelagia Kolotouros, and is finding the city fertile stimulation to channel the themes of his spring collection for Winnie.
He tapped local musician Oko Ebombo — he described him as “the perfect Winnie muse” — for the campaign images. Shot by photographer Francis Boissier on VHS tape, they had a grainy, blurred sense of movement.
Inspired by the punk movement — specifically, bands like Bad Brains and Fishbone, known for fusing punk and reggae sounds in the ’70s and ’80s — he wanted to give the collection a rebellious, underground streak.
He commissioned his friend, artist Marcus Leslie Singleton. to create a painting featuring an imaginary version of the musicians in concert, and that served as his mood board, inspiring its combination of muted bright hues with the twisted tailoring Balogun is known for, blurred as if seen through the prism of an abstract painting.
That ties in with the designer’s penchant for highlighting beauty through imperfection. “If something is too perfect, you don’t pay attention, but if there’s something off, it intrigues you,” he said. Given his Savile Row training, his version of punk was understated, of the ideological rather than riotous kind.
A suit jacket and a boilersuit in a checkered cloth were entirely stitched by hand with an intentional homemade look. A sartorial shirt jacket with a shawl lapel in bright yellow linen was sleeveless, and a cowhide bomber given a crinkled finish.
His lightweight fabrics played into the sense of the slightly disheveled. A washed silk shirt had the look of humble cotton, but under the hand, the fabric did not lie. A tennis jacket that nodded to his new gig was given detachable sleeves for a rebellious touch. The pants were worn wide, contributing to the elevated yet casual look, while T-shirts, whether done in an intarsia knit featuring a portrait taken from one of Singleton’s works or in a ribbed cotton jacquard, were anything but basic.