Tag: Fashion

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Culture Living

Worldly wear: Davon Okoro’s ambitious fashion brand Dépendance Global

Davon Okoro turned his childhood interest in clothing fashion into his own label Dépendance Global. Photo by Marley Nichelle

Like many kids of his generation, Davon Okoro spent a lot of time in front of the TV. But while his peers were watching cartoons, Okoro was finding himself in the groundbreaking styles and fashions of MTV.

“I grew up in Nigeria and we didn’t have much money,” he explains. “My mom would go to the thrift store and get us a bunch of graphic tees and jeans.” Okoro saw similar secondhand fits flaunted by the stars of MTV and was inspired. “Ever since I was a kid I had a thing for clothes.”

His family left Nigeria and moved to Far Rockaway, New York, on Okoro’s ninth birthday. Today, he’s a second-year nursing student at UVA, and despite pursuing a career in the field of medicine, fashion remains a driving force in his life. In February, he created Dépendance Global, a clothing line of his very own.

Dépendance Global (French for “global addiction”) brings together a few of Okoro’s most enduring interests: fashion, but also multiculturalism and the nature of addiction. “I’m trying to bring awareness to the concept [of addiction],” he says. “Maybe it’s a loved one, maybe it’s drugs, maybe it’s money, maybe it’s work—but we can get so caught up in addiction sometimes that we forget who we are.”

The global aspect of Okoro’s brand speaks to his own varied and unusual life. The cultures he observed in Nigeria, New York, and now Virginia are all “so different,” he says. Likewise, he doesn’t want Dépendance Global to be limited to any one place or time, and plans to continue his informal anthropology across the world. “I want to go overseas and see how other cultures live.”

Okoro says the name refers to his desire to “branch out. I have so many ideas…Dependánce Global is not supposed to be just about one issue.”

A brief glance at his brand’s website confirms that neither Okoro nor his clothing plan on being boxed in. He has four products currently for sale online—tees and sweatshirts with creative nods to a variety of influences, from Arabic to basketball to Playboy.

One shirt, “Psychological Pain,” was inspired by Okoro’s nursing studies. It features a hunched, multiplied figure in apparent agony, lit electric purple by its own neurons. A pain scale from zero to 10 runs up one sleeve, and the back of the shirt reads, “PAIN—THE 5TH VITAL SIGN. YOU ARE NOT ALONE GET HELP!”

“Nursing is about the human body and how the human body works,” Okoro says. “It’s an art of its own.”

Another, called “Black is Beautiful,” speaks to Okoro’s experience living as a Black man. Darine Stern graces the front of the short sleeve button-up, a reprint of the Playboy cover for which she modeled as the magazine’s first African American covergirl. “Growing up, I almost hated my own skin,” Okoro says. “Now I know my Black is beautiful.”

Virgil Abloh, a groundbreaking Black designer and entrepreneur, is another influence who served as a model for Okoro’s self-realization. “When I saw that as a kid, it really motivated me to keep pursuing my dreams,” he says. “I never really got to see African Americans in these positions.” Okoro also lists Kanye West, Yves Saint Laurent, and Louis Vuitton among his inspirations—although, “I grew up in a very low-income neighborhood, so there wasn’t a lot of Louis Vuitton around.”

Dépendance Global may still be in its infancy, but Okoro only sees it growing—existing alongside, or maybe even taking precedence over his nursing ambitions. He expects the brand to one day live up to its name, becoming as well known as the projects of his idols. “If you buy a T-shirt, buy a hoodie, I want that to be your favorite T-shirt or hoodie,” says Okoro. “I want people to know that this is a brand for every person. It’s made out of love.”

Categories
Arts

Grace by design: Walé Oyéjidé uses fashion to tell stories

“My work is not about the clothes we design, but more about the impact that can be made when people who wear them feel the freedom to express themselves authentically in society,” says Walé Oyéjidé, who gives a talk at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center Saturday, September 14. Publicity photo by Mark Thiessen of National Geographic

“The way that a story is told is just as important as the story itself,” designer Walé Oyéjidé told a National Geographic Storytellers Summit audience in January. Oyéjidé, who’s also a director, writer, filmmaker, musician, and lawyer, tells stories by using fashion design to dispel stereotypes and biases. In his ongoing photography project “After Migration,” featuring models who are themselves migrants, he asks us to “really look” at the strength and triumph in people’s unique identities, and to celebrate the resilience, beauty, and life experience of those who’ve suffered. “There is grace to be found. You just have to look long enough,” says Oyéjidé.

C-VILLE: How did you decide to use fashion design as a way to communicate about social issues?

Walé Oyéjidé: It’s incumbent on all of us to make an effort to improve our surroundings, in whatever ways that we can. I happen to be an artist and designer, so these are the tools at my disposal. Among others, the issue of migration is one that I’m particularly sensitive toward. Much of my work focuses on celebrating the lives of migrants; a group of people whom our society commonly disregards.

Describe how an article of clothing can empower.

As a ubiquitous form of expression, clothing is the most common way that we make statements about who we are, or who we aspire to be. My work is not about the clothes we design, but more about the impact that can be made when people who wear them feel the freedom to express themselves authentically in society.

Is there a story about how your design work has affected someone personally?

As a designer, I’ve worked with Sub-Saharan migrants in Europe and Maasai tribesmen in Tanzania. But I’m not comfortable discussing the circumstances of any specific individual in a way that is self-aggrandizing.

What do you do to ensure that your design work is accessible?

We make art that is authentic to our experience. The work is intended to be for anyone with whom it resonates, or for anyone who finds meaning or connection in what we create.

What celebrities wear your work?

Our pieces have appeared in motion pictures, in museums across the globe, and on the stage of the Super Bowl. That said, we are more interested in ordinary individuals who are able to find a transformative experience through our artistic expressions than we are with collecting marquee names.

Walé Oyéjidé will discuss his work with Dr. Kwame Otu, an assistant professor at UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, in the lecture series Seeing Black: Disrupting the Visual Narrative at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center on Saturday.

publicity photo

Categories
Arts

Marine Special Ops vet makes tailoring his new mission

Charlottesville-based military veteran Derek Questell is raising the bar on men’s fashion with his designer suit business, Tailored Quest. Publicity photo

Men’s fashion and the military have a lot in common, if you ask Derek Questell. After serving in the Marines for 10 years and four deployments, Questell now tailors custom clothing from his Charlottesville home, calling the enterprise Tailored Quest.

“It’s in my blood, my Italian heritage,” says Questell. “My dad gave me my first suit when I was 15. He said, ‘Son, always have a well-tailored suit. It’ll never fail you.’” Questell, who grew up on the coast of North Carolina, tells stories of watching his father build guitars for 45 years and cooking alongside his mother, whom he worried about upsetting when he enlisted two years after the Iraq invasion—a “no-brainer,” he says.

After joining the service, he worked his way up the ranks from a diesel mechanic, to being recruited, trained and sent around the world as a Marine Special Operations Raider. He served in the first peacetime mission set in Indonesian embassies once combat operations ended in Afghanistan in 2013. That experience motivated Questell to pursue a career change.

“I learned that my younger guys on the team did not own suits,” he says. “They had them, but they fit really poorly and it wasn’t a good representation for our organization.”

Notwithstanding the 1932 Singer sewing machine Questell inherited from a great aunt, he appears (wait for it…) tailor-made for his profession. It’s hard not to miss Questell—dressed in a made-to-measure navy and pale-blue twill striped, European-cut suit with a paisley lining, matching trousers with Italian suspenders, a custom navy striped shirt, a vintage hand-knitted red silk tie and one of his favorite pairs of shoes: oxblood double monk straps. He says people often stop him on the street and ask what he does, to which he smiles and hands them a business card.

Questell wants to inspire his brothers still in the military and show that it’s “not that hard to start your own company.” He went back to school, finished his undergraduate degree and is now engaged to a fellow veteran. They’re planning a June wedding at Keswick Vineyards, where Questell will showcase his work. He’s a strong believer in versatility—that what you wear on perhaps the most photographed day of your life can be worn day-to-day, too.

“How much cooler would it be to get a nice suit that you could get married in, take with you and write your own tailored quest?” Questell asks.

Questell says he doesn’t settle until he gets that “wow” from clients, calling it a game-changer when “guys transform into what they want to be.” He incorporates stylistic elements and materials from his world travels, such as cashmere pashminas he bought in Afghanistan.

Questell focuses on the educational aspects of men’s fashion—modeling his mission to educate and build clients’ confidence in themselves after what he learned in the Marines.

“I take that from my own Special Operations model of train, assist and advise,” he says. “So taking that with style, I’ll teach you the tools to go to your wardrobe, put something together and know that it goes [together].”

Looking to grow his business, Questell now offers clients the opportunity to gift custom tailoring sessions. He has his eye on a showroom space, tapping into the wedding industry and building his sales team.

He doesn’t mind getting several text messages a day from clients or friends asking him how they look—to which Questell responds, “You got it, brother. Keep on.”