Head of State+

October 13, 2018

The youngest designer of all time to show at Fashion Week Men’s is Taofeek Abijako: a bubbly, warm 20-year-old from Lagos, Nigeria, by way of Albany. His brand, Head of State +, pays futuristic homage to the West African post-colonial youth culture of his parents’ generation.

Full of carefully chosen slogans and references to traditional Nigerian culture, his sardonic takes on the classic British silhouette position themselves as the uniform of choice for the self-aware and well-dressed dissenter. Head of State+, if ever a clothing brand could, transmits history.

His two previous shows at Fashion Week were carefully-planned commentary on political issues in Africa: in the background, he had a recording of a Yoruba choir and Nigerian activist Fela Kuti’s speeches, and other references to social, political and economic issues in Africa.

Interview by Nora Kipnis
Photo by Charles Caesar

office met him at the Public Hotel to talk about his upcoming collection, his upbringing in Nigeria and what it’s like to be the fashion world’s kid brother.

He had just come from a whirlwind afternoon showing his sketches to makers in SoHo. He was working out the specifics of his upcoming collection: dimensions, pocket sizes, inseam width. “It’s the boring part, but the really important part,” he tells me. “These details determine how the clothes will hang, and can make the difference between a well made piece and a shoddy one.”

Abijako was hesitant to share details of his upcoming collection; since his shows are so in-depth and almost theatrical, he wants to save the major message for the audience. There were more than a few times that he almost spilled the beans before saying, “Wait, I wanna save that for the show!” Fashion Week spoilers aside, Taofeek had a lot to share with us about his feelings regarding what “mastery” means, on post-colonial politics and the social function of being a fashion designer.

So, tell me about your new collection.

I don’t wanna give it away!

It’s a secret?

It’s so secretive! But I’m debuting my next collection in February 2019 during Fashion Week and it's my second runway show. I personally think it’s my biggest yet and my best yet. I’ve been looking—oh my god—I’ve been looking so forward to it. And I just can’t give it away!

Okay, okay, can we talk about your previous runway show then? I feel like your shows are almost like performance art. Would you consider it that?

Yeah, in a way. It’s funny, I was recently talking to someone about the upcoming collection because we’re already discussing the casting and production, and I don’t want someone to come to my show and feel like, ‘Oh it’s just a fashion show.’ I want you to have the same feeling you have when you go to the theater and see either a documentary or a movie about a very important subject, and when you go back home you go on your laptop and look more into it. I try so hard not to do too much explaining during the show, and even though it’s all about telling the story, it’s still, in a way, subtle—it can’t be like an obvious story. I want the audience to do as much research as the designer.

So, you’re like, ‘This is your homework.’

Yeah, pretty much. You go to the show and I go, ‘This is your homework.’ Any outsider who hasn’t been through that kind of situation, especially a lot of Americans, their job is to go home, open up their laptop and research the impact the actions of our country are having on people from the other side of the world. And I hope that’s the feeling a lot of people have leaving, especially my next show, which I think is super important, not only to me, but also to my family, and the people that are represented in the show. Oh my god, I feel like I’m gonna give it away! I’m slowly giving it away!

Do you see there being a narrative that links each of your collections together?

Yeah. And that narrative is my narrative. It feels like I’m writing a book and that book is my life—the people I’ve surrounded myself with, the culture I grew up in, the social issues and political issues I witnessed back in Nigeria. So, in a way, the first runway show is the first chapter to an infinite page book. Each collection is a development of the previous collection.

I believe as designers, we’re not just designing clothes, we’re starting conversations. Either we start a conversation or we continue a conversation, so the reason why I consider it an infinite page book is, after I’m done with what I’m doing, there will be someone else continuing that story.

I’ve read some of your interviews and you talk about being in conversation with previous artists—specifically West African artists from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Would you consider that part of the book too, or something that you kind of build off of in a different way?

I never grew up in the ‘60s, I never grew up in the ‘70s, although speaking to people who lived in that time period, it’s very similar to what I experienced growing up in Nigeria. When I reference West African contemporary photographers from the ‘70s, like Malick Sidibe, Saydou Keita, and Oumar Ly, I relate to the characters in the picture. Looking at the characters and how they not only express their confidence, but the way they also translate Western culture, Western clothing and all of that, there’s a deeper political aspect to it. The West comes into Africa, colonizes Africa, and deprives most people of their culture. And speaking specifically about Nigeria, post-independence, there’s this huge scene of people taking Western culture and twisting it. In a way, it’s like reverse—like, ‘You come here and deprive us of our culture, well we take your culture and look, we can do it so much better.’

But at the same time, if you go to Nigeria, if you go to any part of Africa, the culture is still there. The traditions, the ethnic groups. The Nigerian music industry is a perfect representation of this. A lot of the artists are getting inspiration from hip-hop, getting inspiration from R&B, although they’re still making it their own—the originality is still there. And I think, if that applies in the music industry in Nigeria, and in the movie industry in Nigeria, it can apply anywhere, in any industry. Being an African and being part of the diaspora, I have to not only represent my own cultural background, but at the same time, stick to my original story of me moving to the Western world and my translation of the Western world.

So, you have this really deep message and really important political story to tell. How does that impact the way you view the rest of the fashion world? Obviously, not all designers are trying to create clothes with a radical message. Is that frustrating for you?

No. At the end of the day, it’s all about making clothes. We’re not firefighters, we’re not doctors—all we do is make clothes. Although we have the opportunity to tell any story we want, not all designers have to tell a story.

There are three [kinds of] people in the industry: people who just design clothes, and those people are just as revolutionary as the other two people. The other two people are people who start a story or a narrative, and the last person is someone who continues and furthers that narrative. I respect all of them, but the designers I relate to more, I don’t consider them fashion designers, I consider them storytellers. I consider them authors. And I say this with pride and with confidence: I don’t consider myself a fashion designer. I’m not a fashion designer. I have a story to tell, and fashion just happens to be another medium to express that.

If I want to tell that story, if I want to tell a story of that intensity, it has to be as pure—as raw and as honest as the person who’s been through that situation tells it. I don’t want it to come off as me explaining someone else’s life story, or me explaining what someone else has been through.

How do you get to that level of honesty?

It comes from researching as much as possible. Once you’ve consumed as much information as possible, you yourself become the information. Everything I put out there has to be subconscious and it has to be natural. It can’t be forceful—I can’t wake up in the morning and go, ‘I want to tell this story.’

Even the idea for my next show, it’s based off conversation, off research. A lot of the best art I’ve seen or come across—the artist doesn’t explain, although the story is there. The way you translate it would be very different than the way I translate it, although there’s one similar thing under it, and that’s the original story.

So, who are the designers that stoke your feelings?

Feeling is a personal thing. Just because I see a designer and I don’t feel, doesn’t mean that another person doesn’t feel that either. A handful of artists have made me feel or still make me feel. I consider those people the greatest of all time. And the majority of them actually are outside of fashion. With music, Fela Kuti is someone I grew up listening to my entire life and I still do. I listen to a Fela song and I look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘I haven’t contributed anything to this world.’ I haven’t achieved my full potential. If someone like Fela could tell his story as pure and as raw as possible, without any fear, what’s stopping me and everyone from doing that? So, Fela makes me feel, and I’ll continue to talk about him, and I’ll continue to pay tribute to him as long as possible.

I would say as a storyteller, you’ve done your job [if you get] one person to feel. That’s all you need. And that one person could be you, yourself, as the artist. The satisfaction of the creator is just as important as the satisfaction of the consumer. Everything in society is set up to appease and appeal and it’s all about consumer satisfaction—if you don’t satisfy the consumer you’ve failed. The creator’s satisfaction is just as important, and to me, I think it’s more important than the consumer. Fela isn’t about being commercial. Fela isn’t about mass appeal. He was anti-establishment. It would be a disservice to Fela to continue his reputation, but flip it and make it more commercial—it has to be as pure as possible.

Feeling it is when you look at it ,you get the exact same feeling as looking at yourself from an outside perspective. It’s a reflection of you. And I think that will be the end of my—the moment I feel, you know that quote, feeling one with nature? But instead of nature, feeling at one with my culture. Feeling at one with my upbringing. There was a significance to the way my parents talked to me, the things they made me do when I was a kid. I thought, ‘You guys are so annoying,’ but now I look back on it and I wish I could go back to Nigeria and do it all over again, looking at things a bit differently. My whole life, I think I will continue to pursue that experience again.

How do people respond to you when they see that you’re really young? Do you feel like you’re kind of a little kid in the industry?

Even if people see me as a little kid in the industry, I don’t mind it. Yes, people look at me as this kid, trying to find his way, but so is everyone else. We all have so much to learn. Even when I’m 40, I still want people to look at my work the same way they look at it when I’m 20. When I’m 60, I’m still that little kid. I want you to keep seeing potential for as long as possible. There’s no point of ‘I’ve learned it all.’ The world is billions of years old—that’s a lot of information from different generations. So, we all are still little kids.

There’s a Da Vinci quote—I don’t know if it’s real, but it pretty much said, ‘I’ve offended God and mankind for not fulfilling my best work, or my best potential, and leaving that behind.’ The way we look at Da Vinci, he’s someone who has mastered his craft. But the way he looks at himself is, ‘I haven’t fulfilled that.’ I don’t think anyone would ever get to the point where they have. If someone comes up to you and brags about how they’ve mastered something, they’re kidding themselves. You can’t master anything. You can’t master design. We’re all students, and life is the teacher. We need to get rid of the idea of someone who’s mastered their craft. Yes, experience is very important, but experience doesn’t mean you’re a master of something. Experience just means you’ve seen more and done more. What I’ve also noticed is the sense of maturity differs based on culture, and a 10-year-old Nigerian has seen a lot more and has as much maturity than a lot of 25-year-olds in America. And again, it’s all about what you’re exposed to. I grew up very poor, with 10 people [living] in one room. That one room was our kitchen, our living room, our bedroom—that one room is everything. Growing up in that, and also the political turmoil back home, the corruption, being exposed to all that—it forces you not only to mature faster, but also see the world in a different way. There’s one saying that a lot of Nigerians and Lagotians say: ‘If you can survive in Lagos, and if you can make it in Lagos, you can make it anywhere in the world.’

What have been the toughest lessons you’ve learned so far in fashion? Or the most unexpected?

The way a lot of people look at fashion from the outside, people think about the glamour, the runway, the models. But it’s much more than that. No one sees the struggle of the designer and no one sees the 10,000 hours that have been put in. But now it’s a whole other perspective, and that’s been a tough adjustment. Just figuring out, ‘Hey this shit is real life,’ and real life punches you in the face, and you have to get up 10 times stronger. And there’s still bigger obstacles down the road. It’s all about breaking down every wall that comes along the way.

Are there any frontiers that you want to move towards, new things that you want to try, new markets or industries, that you’re curious about?

Architecture. If I ever go back to school, it won’t be fashion, it will be architecture. Any time I see an architect I’m like, ‘Wow. You guys are really it.’ They live in the future more than anyone. It’s insane. I remember when I was in high school we went on a field trip to RPI and I visited the architecture side of things. Those guys are amazing. Imagine spending so much time being physically in the present, but your mind has to be consistently in the future. It’s just insane and I’m just fascinated by that—I want to walk in their shoes some day. That’s where design is very honest, because it serves a function.

Besides the upcoming show, what’s next for Head of State+?

I’m currently looking around for galleries in the city to do a months-long exhibition to further the narrative [of the next runway show]. I want everyone to see it. I want everyone to experience it. Clothing, art installations, paintings that I’ve been working on, video documentaries, and a documentary I’m working on with my friend. Pretty much, you know, the full visual experience.

Photos from Head of State+'s 'Fulfilling All Righteousness' collection by Aden Suchak; courtesy of the brand.

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After 30 years and over 100 cult fragrances, COMME DES GARÇONS PARFUMS 1994–2025 BY SIMONETT & BAER launches this month

December 17, 2024

“I have to add that the topic is, of course, an irrational one, because it's not art and it's not fashion. It has to do with scent, which is something in the air,” explains Dino Simonett, renowned art-book maker and designer/publisher of the new COMME des GARÇONS x SIMONETT & BAER book, which details 30 years of CDG perfumes.

“The moment you smell something is irrational,” he continues. “This book transports you and brings you to the idea behind the perfumes. People have gotten thousands of art catalogues from me, but this fucking perfume thing really drives people a little bit crazy, you know? Because everybody has this bottle; and that bottle smells like this on them; and this bottle I need; and all the memories and everything. I like it a lot that we made this.”

As fans and family of the world’s coolest brand prepared to gather at Dover Street Parfums Market in Paris to celebrate the launch of the book, our Editor-At-Large Paige Silveria shared some coffee and cigarettes with Simonett to discuss his wild trajectory, making books with Joseph Beuys and Tilda Swinton early on, and the importance of nonconformal thinking.

By Paige Silveria

This fucking perfume thing really drives people a little bit crazy.

Paige Silveria: Tell me about yourself. You make books.

Dino Simonett: My books are my art. Each book might be a painting or sculpture. And you should not do the same sculpture all the time. When you hike somewhere, you never should go the same way back home — this is something my mother taught me when I was young. In the same way, it's boring to make the same stuff all the time. So I try to find a way to invent my own language.

PS: This book you’ve made is really beautiful.

DS: It’s hyperrealistic larger-than-life images of boxes and flacons in an endless row presented on paper the thickness of a children’s book.

PS: I loved how it said in the press release that you woke up one Sunday morning and the idea for the book suddenly came to you.

DS: The backstory is that Remo Hallauer [COO of COMME des GARÇONS International] is a true book lover. We met at the Offprint book fair in Paris. And one day, shortly after peak COVID, this email came from him asking if I’d think about a possible collaboration with one of the young stars here — and no hard feelings, but it didn’t work out. So then, as it is in life, which is the essential thing, you have to have an idea. And most of the time, they’re not good enough. You have to have another and another and then you go, Ah ha! Perfume.

PS: And you’d already been pretty familiar with their fragrances?

DS: I’ve known this stuff since the beginning. I wore the first perfume they created. It was part of my life all the time, and I thought, It's so funny. There’s a connection with how I make the books: like two, three books a year, all collaborations and each is different. Just like their perfumes. So I immediately texted Remo.

PS: And what perfect timing, with the 30-year anniversary.

DS: Yes, but this was two years ago or so. I hadn’t had the jubilee in mind. It might not look like much, but there was a lot of work to do.

PS: Many of the advertisements and images weren’t archived, physically or digitally, right? You had to search all over for a good portion of the material?

DS: Well we also had to wait for the official deal to go through in the beginning. Adrian Joffe [President of COMME des GARÇONS International and Dover Street Market International] wanted to do it but he didn’t have the mind space at the time; they were about to open the Dover Street Market here in Paris. So we were on our own for a bit, developing the project from zero. We looked all over the Internet and tried to create the chronology. I had a young guy helping me. He kept reminding me to be patient and to continue to work on growing the book. The door was open, but we had to wait in front of the next room. So we took little steps to prepare ourselves. And stuff slowly worked out.

PS: And thank God for the Internet.

DS: Yes, because as you mentioned, there was no archive. We thought surely they’d have something in the basement. But no, that didn’t exist. At one point they sent us a list of all the perfumes so we had a clear checklist to manage. I had to become an expert.

PS: There are so many, over 100?

DS: Yeah, and at one point the CDG team was activated. It was like a machine and in the spring suddenly a load of stuff was coming. First we had to grow the grapes, then make the wine and then the grappa. And at the end, it's a really strong grappa. And so things came together, and then one day Adrian said, “All is fine, but Rei [Kawakubo] must now also approve it. This is how the system works.” But nobody had told me! So Remo met with Rei to show her the book.

PS: That’s a bit of pressure!

DS: She could have said no and we’d have to throw everything in the garbage, two years of work. There was indeed a little bit of pressure. But it was fine. She liked the book. Then at the end of this summer we met again and they asked if they could have some of the finished copies on 20 November in Tokyo. I said, “I’m sorry, what?” He was thinking that the book was finished, you know? I told him we still needed a lot of material to finish it. Sometimes it's nice though to have this pressure. It's motivating and thrilling when you finally accomplish it all.

PS: Let’s go back. How did your upbringing inform who you are?

DS: It has to do with nonconformal thinking. Most people think the same. And we’re constantly pressured as well, by everything around us to conform. You have to really fight to keep your head and so I had this upbringing with this rather eccentric mother who was absolutely nonconformistic in every way. She was resolute. Why should we follow the path of the masses? It was never my thing. Voilà.

PS: How were you in school?

DS: I was not so good at school. I was only skateboarding at that time. I was on the Swiss National Team. I even was here in Paris at a European championship when I was 15 at the Trocadero. And my mother said, “You are not going to school anymore. You need an apprenticeship. It makes no sense to send you to school any longer.” I was independent and had my first salary at 16.

PS: What were you doing?

DS: I was a carpenter making tables, chairs, all that stuff. All my friends went to high school with like 16-week holidays, while I had only four. And so it was really, really tough shit for a 16 year old. But I learned two important things. The first one was discipline; seven o'clock each day it started and lasted nine hours. And the second thing was precision; you have to do things right. People always said to me that the apprenticeship was good as I’d really use it for the rest of my life. And I always thought that was such bullshit. But actually, it's kind of true. And so anyways, the moment I finished my apprenticeship, the very last day of the last test, I went on the Interrail for one month and never went back to a carpenter shop.

PS: What’d you do after?

DS: I wrote a letter to this very super famous music guy, Claude Nobs who was organizing the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, telling him I’d like to work there that summer. I mentioned that I’d just finished my apprenticeship for carpentry. He phoned me back immediately after getting the letter. He said, “Oh you’re a carpenter? You can come right now.” He was renovating his apartment in Montreux. So I stayed and worked there alone while he was up at his chalet. I felt like Kevin McCallister from Home Alone in this completely furnished apartment. And then the festival started, and there was this guy from New York doing a large mural painting. It was Keith Haring. I had no idea who he was. We became friends. Then I met George Benson and Herbie Hancock. It started from nothing and then one thing comes, another thing comes, another thing comes. This is how I started, which is maybe not the natural way. But I was following my intuition and taking chances and putting myself out there.

PS: And you're going after what you have a passion for.

DS: I think that’s the best way to live one's life. It was like my own private art school. I met all the guys I was totally hot about. I met Joseph Beuys and told him I wanted to do an art project with him. I got his number and he told me to ask for his assistant. But I took everything for granted, what people said to me. So I had this phone number in Berlin. And I called the guy 20 times until this fucking meeting with Beuys finally happened. And we met and made a small collaboration art magazine called “Quer.” You just have to stick to the stuff.

PS: Wow. You don't still have one of those copies around, do you?

DS: I had one and I brought it to Remo at one of our meetings. Adrian saw it and immediately took it … I hope he gave it back to Remo. Adrian has a pile of my stuff that he wanted to see, so that’s good.

PS: Yeah, of any coffee table in the world for it to be displayed, his is probably in the top 10.

DS: So then I decided my dream was to be a film director. There was a film school in Berlin that I applied to. They only took about 18 people from 600. We waited all week to see this list on the wall for the final call back meeting. And my name wasn’t there. I was like, “Shit!” And then a week later, I received a letter saying I’d been accepted. Later the director told me it was clear enough with my application and the art magazine I’d sent that I’d be accepted. I don’t say this to brag. I say this to tell you that every young person that wants to go somewhere, all they have to do is fight. You have to get out of your house and your small town and your comfort zone and all that shit.

PS: I agree. So you’ve made films?

DS: I made a feature movie and went to the film festival. It was really amazing and everything, but I was not Tarantino, you know? So it’s the last semester and Tilda Swinton is supposed to teach a seminar. I really wanted to attend it. It would be the cherry on top of the cake. Then she postponed it once, then twice. The third time, I’m on the tube and there’s a woman in front of me with a newspaper that says that Tilda’s super mentor, Derek Jarman, had passed away. It’s the very Monday morning that her seminar is set to begin. And I thought, Oh shit. She’s not going to be there. But then she was there after all and it was a fantastic week. There were only five of us students and we all fell in love with her. And she fell in love with us. I’ve known her since.

PS: I can only imagine. How’d you make the transition into books?

DS: You have to find out what you're really good at. I had long discussions with this guru, an old guy who was a very diligent, very bright guy. I was really miserable, feeling directionless. He asked me why I wasn’t continuing with filmmaking. And I couldn't give him an answer. Then he said right into my face, “Probably it’s because you’re not good enough.” The message was one-hundred percent received. It was a relief; I'm not a bad person. This guy told me the truth, and I could accept it. And when you can do this, you can figure out what you actually want to do, what you’re actually good at. I started making books. I made one with another film director. And we visited Tilda at her hotel, bringing one to her as a present. As we’re knocking, I thought to myself, If I did another book focused on people in this business, it’d have to be her. And she opens the door, looks at the book and says, “Oh, I would like to have a book like this on me.”

PS: These situations seem unreal.

DS: I spent five years on her book, which was an enormous success. It included stills from all her films and launched it in different cities. Fantastic shit.

PS: And now you’ve just released this soon-to-be iconic CDG book.

DS: I've learned to be patient; things can take you years. This book with Adrian and Remo took two years and I didn’t even know if it was going to be approved! Follow your dreams as much as you can. It's not so important which dream it is exactly. If I see a step in front of me, I try to take each chance I get. This is what I wish for everybody, in whatever situation you find yourself, start to do something with nothing. This book started with just a simple idea. You can not find anything like this on the Internet, this compilation, this narrative. It’s something we had to bring together with enormous work. And here we are. I think in our digital, splattered times sometimes you have to make something which is real. That you can sit with and focus on in silence and really take time alone with it.