Cut From a Different Cloth: Winnie New York is Reinventing Suiting
Kimberly Rose Drew & Idris Balogun Discuss Heritage, Tradition, and Inspiration
- Interview: Kimberly Drew
There are very few designers who can say they landed their first Savile Row apprenticeship at the age of 14. The Nigerian-born British-raised designer Idris Balogun is one of them, and through his label Winnie New York, he has set out to bring an entirely new perspective to traditional tailoring. Today, Balogun is best known for his sterling CV with stints at both Burberry and Tom Ford, but his story really started long before going in-house. Like many ambitious creatives, he was once just a young boy with a love and curiosity for the industry. “My first encounter with fashion came when I was in secondary school,” he tells me over email. “I can't remember exactly how, but I came across the Ozwald Boateng documentary [A Man’s Story, 2010], [but] this changed my life.”
Raised in the estates of Tottenham, North London, by his mother, Yetunde Balogun, the eldest of three siblings, Idris was enchanted by “this world where everyone looked like the best versions of themselves.” Just like Boateng, Idris was raised by parents who’d immigrated from West Africa and started new lives in the U.K.—Boateng’s family is from Ghana and Balogun’s from Nigeria. “Here was this man who looked like me spearheading the entire movement.” Idris soon found himself skipping football practice and journeying to Mayfair to visit Savile Row to peer into a universe that he’d only seen on screen. “I would sit on that street for hours and hours staring at countless dandy characters coming out of these small shops. I think in a way the clothing gave me the feeling of security, I think I was dealing with so much in my own life, being a boy growing up in the estates where at times the oppression is almost suffocating, I wanted an escape.”
In his early teens, prompted by some friends, Idris set out on his dream to outfit the dandies he’d seen on his visits to Mayfair. “We were talking about what we all wanted to be in the future and I blurted out a tailor. They all laughed and I think that was the battery I needed.” This battery would set Balogun off on a journey to every shop on Savile Row pursuing an apprenticeship until he was taken in by the atelier Hardy Amies. During his three years with Amies, Balogun learned first-hand how to expertly cut and show men’s trousers and jackets. Outside of work he found himself intrigued and immersed in the world’s created by Alexander McQueen, Cristobal Balenciaga, Raf Simons, and Tom Ford. Falling deeper and deeper under fashion’s spell, he left London to begin study in New York at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where he studied for two years before realizing that a lot of what was being taught he’d already learned as an apprentice. Like many of fashion’s greats, he didn’t complete his tenure at FIT.
After leaving school, he was approached by Burberry, under the leadership of the brand’s then-CEO Christopher Bailey. After Bailey’s departure in 2017, Balogun went on to work with Tom Ford. Somewhat quickly, and with diligence and rigor, Balogun found himself in fashion’s most inner circle, but still craved the room to explore. While at Tom Ford, Balogun had the opportunity to continue to apply his knowledge and work with price points many designers would dream of, but there was still something missing. “I don't deal with the same things Mr. Ford deals with on a day-to-day basis. I have different challenges, different struggles. I have a different upbringing. So, I just wanted to highlight a lot of those things in my own way.”
In 2018, Balogun left Tom Ford to build something in his own image. His brand, Winnie New York, named in honor of his late grandmother Princess Winifred Dademu, does just that. With impeccable attention to tailoring, Balogun’s elegant sportswear appeals both to the world of fashion he’s come to love, but also to his own story: one of dutiful study and imagination. The brand’s launch started with two smaller capsule collections, but it’s proper introduction happened during the pre-pandemic Paris men’s fashion week with a runway show. Celebrated by fashion and fans and critics alike, the show presented a fusion of timeline elegance and a deep investment in Balogun’s Nigerian heritage, complicating the binary between menswear and womenswear. Recently, SSENSE connected with Balogun to talk about Winnie and his lifelong love of art, which was kickstarted by his mother Yetunde Balogun.
Paul Klee, Tower in Orange and Green, 1922: Paul Klee has a very different way of looking at art. He didn't understand color at a young age and some people even called him colorblind. He creates some of the most beautiful color mixtures that I've ever seen in my life. I look at his work a lot for the color pallets that I choose for Winnie. Featured In Top Image: Winnie New York coat.
Kimberly Drew
Idris Balogun
It’s clear to see that you’re a designer and thinker who is driven by archives, and by traditions, both personal and collective. Can you talk about the role of nostalgia in your work and maybe some artists that help you to create the bridge as you're working?
For Winnie’s next collection, we're going to be working with Tau Lewis, who makes these amazing sculptures. Her work is just like this sort of chaotic bliss. I got a chance to actually speak to her about her inspiration. But before that, I didn't know what it was, but I was just like, "Wow, this is just beautiful and amazing and it gives me this nostalgic feeling of being in Nigeria and seeing these Egungun masquerades in Nigeria." It had the same sort of energy.
How did you encounter Tau's work? What does your research process look like?
For me, I feel like the internet is your friend. All my friends call me "the researcher" because I research everything. If I'm about to cook something, I'll research the hell out of it before I start even like picking out the pot. Earlier in my life, my mom, she loves art, and every Saturday we'd go to these galleries and she would make me learn about these artists that, at the time, I didn't care about. I think when I moved to the US and I moved away from her, it was sort of my way of having her around in spirit, and so, every Saturday, I'd go to Chelsea and check out the galleries, and I'd go to the Lower East Side, or whatever it was. And I think from that, I was able to start to understand the artists that I was into. Tau's work, I discovered because I'd always loved Nick Cave, who was actually my mom's favorite artist.
Your mom put you onto Nick Cave? Wow.
I was working on, I believe the FW18 or 19 collection at Tom Ford and he wanted to create this new sort of vision. Our office was in London, he was moving everything to the States, and he was talking about this sort of youth culture, and he was talking about color, and he was talking about love and all this type of stuff. To me, it sounded like Nick Cave's work, so I kind of immersed myself in that. I wanted to find out about similar artists, as well, that created things that were similar to the Soundsuits, and I came across Tau's work, and I just thought that it was beautiful. I was just taken aback by it.
Nick Cave, Soundsuits, 1992-: One of [my mom’s] friends told her about Nick Cave’s work because she felt like he was inspired by the Nigerian masquerades. Apparently he wasn't, but she felt like he was. If you're someone who knows about the masquerades in Nigeria—they take everyday items, buttons or thread or whatever they find in their homes, and they create these eccentric costumes. So, for that day or hour or whatever it is, they are bigger than life. I love that Nick Cave brings that aspect to his art.
Tau Lewis, Rover, 2019: For the longest time, I put [Tau’s work] on my moodboard. Even for the last collection with Winnie, I definitely took inspiration from some of her work. And then while thinking about the FW21 collection, I wanted to capture that essence. There's just a rawness of being Black and being culturally driven, and there's an energy that I get from [her work] that reminds me of home and whenever I'm in Nigeria. I reached out to her to let her know, "I'm thinking about using your work for inspiration for the FW21 collection." And then eventually, it kind of went into, “Maybe we should just do a whole collection for it."
For so many Black creatives, our stories are framed by the places that we’ve worked. In your case, your story is shaped by the esteemed houses that you've flourished at. At this stage, do you feel impeded by that? How has it been creating the path to finding your own voice?
People just want to define what your work is or in what sort of place they should put it. When I first created Winnie, I felt like people just wanted to put me within those sort of frames. I mean, for someone to say that, "Your work reminds me of Tom Ford" is great, but I didn't want that. I feel like that's one of the mistakes that a lot of the young designers make. For example, [they] leave Balenciaga or Saint Laurent and decide to sort of reiterate the same sort of teaching that they've already had at Saint Laurent. For me, I just wanted a completely different dialog and I felt like I was a completely different person than Mr. Ford. I don't deal with the same things Mr. Ford deals with on a day-to-day basis. I have different challenges, different struggles. I have a different upbringing. I just wanted to highlight a lot of those things in my own way.
What role would you say tradition plays in your work as you articulate your own vision as a designer?
I've always been the kind of person where I appreciate tradition, but I feel like individuality is necessary in order to be a creative. I started my career at Savile Row, which is probably the most traditional place you can start fashion design. So, I started there as a cutter and while I'm on Savile Row, they literally tell you, "You have to cut this way" or "You have to sew it this way" or "You have to draw out the pattern this way. This is what a blazer looks like. Never use these colors. On these dates, you have to use these." So many rules and traditions that I just couldn't. I wanted to see what would happen if I cut another one, and that's how you breed progress—by being an individual, and by thinking out of the box. You have to appreciate where it came from, but trying to move the conversation forward is essential. And even within my collections, I use a lot of traditional methods to create, but I love to switch it up. For example, even my past being a Nigerian man raised in London, living in New York, I have my traditions from my mom or my dad or when I go home and I see the traditional way things are done. I appreciate it and sometimes I do weave it into my work, but at times, I look at it and I say, "Well, what's the essence of this? What's the base? What's the reason?" I want to move the conversation forward.
Kerry James Marshall, A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self, 1980: This Kerry James Marshall portrait is one of the first paintings that I'd ever seen with someone Black on it. I was really young when I first saw his work. [This] one sort of blew me away because of the richness of the Blackness in his subjects. There's something about it that just puts me at ease. And the fact that it's done on paper is, like, insane. Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1973: I’m a huge fan of Francis Bacon. He's famous for saying that he felt that his face was not attractive, he felt like his face was all types of abnormal. It kind of hits a soft spot for me. There's a sense of acceptance in his work. He is truly who he is. I'm a firm believer in being who you are and being unapologetic about it. He had critics that would always say that his work is a bit distraught or crazy or unsettling, and he just didn't care. He just created his work the way he saw fit.
- Interview: Kimberly Drew
- Date: December 11, 2020
