Ephemera

Standouts in the collection included the "America in Tatters" skirt, which employed the repurposing of an American flag in a moving illustration of the historical and cyclical trauma that the Black community experiences and is expected to overcome without the proper support or resources to process. Through its intricacies and thought-provoking attention to detail, it's immediately clear that this collection has been years in the making.

Mohammed explains that he has taken over a decade meditating on and assessing the utility of various forms of escapism in the ongoing struggle for Black liberation. The collection serves as an amalgamation of these meditations. In an exclusive backstage interview with office directly following the presentation, the creative director elaborates that the "show is about assessing strategies, and assessing the futility of the most often employed strategies. [They are] ultimately kind of avoidance mechanisms, like to fight, to engage in violence, to overly indulge in escapism, and in drug culture. These are things that touch so many lives.

"I guess this was about relating that to the ongoing trauma and understanding that those things don't come out of nowhere. If we can even sort of reckon with those realities of our current existence, and look at them as indications that we need to change something, they can be the starting point to moving forward."

In helping us understand the conceptual meaning and purpose behind the show and the format in which it was presented, Mohammed says that "the song was called 'Goodbyes,' which obviously has an implication of flight. It is about imagining the point of departure. The conceptual point of departure for the show was what do you wear to an opening night cocktail party on a yacht that's bringing all of the Black people back to Africa. The idea was that the models were sort of becoming comfortable with the fact that they couldn't really see what was beyond this moment, but they were still going to choose to try to move somewhere. I think for me, as an artist, I don't know if that's an escapist fantasy. It doesn't seem to actually be viable with what I know about politics and international borders. It's not an actual possibility for most people. And so it's about the recognition that this lived experience is not all that there is in the world for us and all that there is in the future for us, but that the only way to get to a better future is to really engage with the moment you're in."