Kelechi Odu By Kelechi Odu

Kelechi Odu 

Kelechi Odu is a Nigerian designer and architect. Inspired by his mother, he started his eponymous fashion house in 2001 focusing initially on women’s wear. Collections were critically and commercially well received and he showed in New York Fashion Week and has been stocked at Dernier-Cri and Cloak in New York. Safari Remix is his first full men’s wear collection, having created bespoke pieces for clients over the years, and is his first to be stocked in Nigeria. Very much the contemporary visionary, Odu believes that when a man dresses he is looking for pieces that combine structure and fabric effortlessly, reflect his mood and evoke the message he wishes to send out to the world. He is passionate about Nigerian designers being at the forefront of the fashion landscape and communicating their aesthetic globally. Odu divides his time between New York and Lagos

Spring/Summer 2012 Collection:

FELA, THE MANOR YEAR; This collection takes its cue from the premise of Fela still being alive and retired to his farm in Abeokuta. It imagines a life filled with hordes of admirers taking pilgrimage to his estate in search of advice and guidance as well as younger generations of artists, activists and dilettantes who see him as a link to a period in Ni­geria where creatively, anything felt possible. The collection imag­ines what this man of means, sedentary but still incendiary would wear:

Clothes for slipping on after a day walking the land.

Clothes for evenings spent reluctantly receiving yet more accolades from dignitaries he still disdains.

Clothes that reflect his roles of ideologue, grandfather, patron and mentor.

Clothes that recall his days as a performer, tempered by sobriety and the demands of his age.

These inspirations manifest in a 70’s palette of pastels, all cut for the heat in lightweight cottons and linens. The agrarian are aspects referenced in English countryside staples, grounded in fabrics in­spired by Aso-oke, the cloth of his forefathers.

This is a collection for a man who lives his life confidently and with irreverence, accidently collecting acolytes along the way.