As an androgynous brand, Nigeria-originated Bloke is neither masculine or feminine, and neither this or that. It’s in between; it’s “nothing.” But as Bloke’s designer Fatih Oluwajimi states, “Nothing is never ‘Nothing.’” He elaborates, “I believe that the word ‘Nothing’ itself means something. Consequentially, 'Nothing' can’t be perceived as either black or white; there are gray matters in between.”
The idea of nothingness brings Oluwajimi to the art movement Dada. Based on the “negation of the accepted laws of beauty,” Dadaism relies on absence to produce a relevant substance, not unlike Oluwajimi’s view of “Nothing.”
Inspired by Dadaism and the concept of nothingness, Oluwajimi has created Bloke’s Spring/Summer 2019 collection, titled “About Nothing.”
The latest collection is designed with an attempt to blur the boundaries between knit and tailoring, and at the same time switch techniques between both knit and tailoring with the use of black, white and gray colors.
To complete the garments, Oluwajimi collaborated with the poet Lanaire Aderemi on a poem, which was then silkscreened on fabrics and cut in a way to create a distorted reading of the poem on the garments. The technique allows him to emulate the ‘Dada Art’ way of composing a poem.
“I’m assuming that referring to ‘Something’ as ‘Nothing’ is ‘Something’ because mentally you connect to an absence of an idea or object which is absent,” Oluwajimi explains.
See more photos from Bloke’s Spring/Summer 2019 lookbook below.
