Fashion Neurosis with IB Kamara

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0:52Hi, come in.

0:58Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, I.B. Kamara. Thank you for having me, Bella. Can you tell me what you're wearing today and why you chose these particular clothes? Today I'm wearing an off-white denim. I'm wearing a top. I don't know where I found it, but I found it in some shop. I'm wearing a hat by my friend Jawara Allen. And I'm wearing some clubs, black clubs. I think I chose it because it's just comfortable. This is how I usually dress at home. Or I might be with a short swim. And it's just my everyday kind of like simple look. And to describe your mantle is hard because your creative output has no containers and you're a stylist, you're a creative director, a magazine editor and a music video director.

1:52And now you've just released an EP of your own music and you work in so many creative fields. How would you describe yourself? it's so hard for me to describe myself to be honest but i just i'm just someone that takes a medium and find my way around it i'm not afraid to try something new and and as a being i feel like my purpose here is to is to fully express myself and so i think that's the simplest term i can really describe myself i think i'm just a true expressionist and And I like to dive into things and learn and fully be inspired by it. And also find my own way around it. Find a different direction to it that is maybe not the norm.

2:46And I'm not scared to take a risk. So maybe in simple terms, plain English, I'm just an expressionist. living and learning from great minds around me. You described growing up in the Gambia and after leaving Sierra Leone when you were four, I think, and not having any TV or internet and having to use your imagination as kids. Did that embed itself as a survival strategy when you came to England? I think so. I think for me, at a very young age, I knew... I mean I understood I came from a very poor background which is like you know I was born in Sierra Leone and Sierra Leone had war for so many years and I'm born into that war so I realized that you know there was no TV you know we played outside the best we could but I had so many things in my head that wanted to explore as a child and I think there were little outlets to really make those ideas live and I think I then just internalized a lot of things.

4:00I think I started dreaming bigger and bigger as much as I could. So yeah at the age of four and almost six, I would say at the age of six is when we actually ran away from the war and moved to the Gambia. And in the Gambia is when I first set of in in in the gamut was the first time i had access to television so so growing up in sierra leone there was no such thing as a visual um point of view so i had to make up make up everything myself and with my friends yeah because you describe your initial interests in fashion as from looking at bbc and cnn presenters and what they were wearing and did you find was your interest in politics also stimulated in any way by how these presenters looked?

4:57Absolutely. To me, they were my superstars. And I didn't know their names at that time, but I saw the way they dressed. And then I was much more into politics because we had to watch it. And my uncle made me watch CNN, BBC every single morning before going to school. So it became like an everyday information outpouring to me. And I love what it looked. I knew the ads. I knew the visual sounds. And I just sucked all of it. And I think that was my first entry into the world and learning about the West, learning about kids' school, could you know live freely um globally and so yeah i think the news for sure was a get gateway to my early formed memories of um of creativity in a way it's so interesting to think that the communication of politics, especially you living in a war zone, was made kind of possible or more absorbable to do with how the people were put together and what they were wearing.

6:24and it enhances the language of what people are telling you, what they're using to communicate with you. And it's such an interesting idea that they would be the kind of representatives of something so important. Yes, and I think as a seven, six-year-old, your mind is very explosive and you take every single thing in and you find ways to sort of manifest yourself into them. And so their style on TV and everyone around me influenced a lot of my later years of work. And there's a lot of tailoring in my work because that's what I saw. They were on immune. And so in my subconscious, these things were becoming codes that I will want to use in my work.

7:27And so taking even the most traumatic information from television, I was able to use my own little mind to find fantasies and creativity in that situation that I grew up in. in. You described not seeing your mother for nearly 15 years from early childhood until you moved to England as a teenager. Even though you had a happy childhood, did that create gulfs around intimacy, not growing up with her? I think so. I think, you know, I didn't see my mom. I think my mom left me at the age of four to come to the UK to find a better life as a refugee, which I understood growing up you know it was for the greater good it was you had to just suck it up and and and find love where you could but I didn't really understood love for a very long time because there was no one there to hug you when you actually needed it or yeah or you were part of a group of kids, being raised and you couldn't really fully express yourself.

8:40So for a long time I just hide a lot and it does affect me to this very day to be honest but that's for the greater good like most people you know. I also am very fortunate human to come from a mother that had nothing and had to really struggle for so long without much giving to her too previously. But taking the risk to give me everything made me find other ways to push that absence of love from a mother into other things. I remember I just had a lot of, I grew up around so many girls. So that was a place that was filled, but not fully, but it still made me very much in touch with my feminine energy.

9:42And I had a beautiful stepdad that guided me and made sure I, I mean, we had nothing, but we didn't also need to want to the extreme. You know, we traveled in the war with him and he was incredible. as a father who's probably 27. And I just think of myself, 27, Lord, I was lost. And him trying to find a way to protect two young four-year-old boys, you know, seeing the world for the first time through a very traumatic lens and how he had to cope with all of that. But he gave as much love as he could. So I am so appreciative of that, of him. I'm proud that he found a way to keep me intact during those hard times.

10:38Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting you talking about the greater good and trying to kind of understand that concept when you're a tiny child. Yeah. It's so confusing, the idea of that. I mean, you know, being a refugee creates all this necessity of pressure on a family. But I suppose I wanted to ask you about that because my mother left me when I was seven for three months and I didn't know where she was when we were in Morocco. and it's a hard thing to recover from entirely. It leaves a kind of mistrust. Well, it did in me or a wariness that I'm trying to really counteract now because I don't want to be a wary, mistrustful person.

11:37I want to be, like, close to love, like you say about love, which is the antidote to those things. totally you know uh the the lack of a mother's love can can affect you in can can can sort of give you the shadow of self-doubt for a long time that i think you just you just have to find a way to heal from it and but i am so proud of my parents you know i I am proud of the risk they took. I'm proud of the life they fought hard to give me. I'm a product of that struggle. And yes, I might not be the 70 % wholesome in terms of a child that had love and hugs and told they were good enough, but I'm happy at my age.

12:45I'm finding peace with those parts of myself that we're deprived of that. And it's a daily step, of course, but, you know, and that's life. You know, I can't, I cannot change what's happened. And if anything, it made me stronger and more determined to be this person. And I'm proud of them, yeah. And you're a pusher of boundaries with style. Was there a piece of clothing that you were obsessed with as a child? No, I'm more obsessed with people and people's style. I, my background was never full of like options. You know, you get the trousers you get and you're happy with it. And, you know, I always make fun of my friends who grew up here and, oh, we went to this place and got these trousers.

13:50But I was thinking, I had made to measure. It might not be, it might not be as much, but it was definitely some, somebody was thinking of me when we were making, when I was sewing those. And those things for me as a child, some brilliant tailor put in so much love. So there was not so much of option. So I'm not materialistic, but I love style. I love when people make an effort. I love the idea of looking cool. I hate the process of finding things to look cool. so I think that's my conflicting perspective on it but I enjoy style I think you know I was I I started on the Barry Kaman for so long and he taught me so much about style and style is how you hold a cup it's how you wake up in the morning and put on the shoes it's a little hem on the on the trousers it's how you fold the cuffs you know and those little details and expressions I'm much more moved by by the amount of brands you have at once yeah because you talk about him giving you a book about fear and why people do things because they're afraid and I wondered what you were afraid of at the time when you were reading that book.

15:24I can never fully find the name of that book but that's one of the best gifts I think I've been given is the first time I read the book, the book taught me that when you are afraid it's also a selfish act because you are sort of depriving something beautiful to happen. So you're holding back. And Barry and I, I think, met at a very perfect time in my early 20s, I think. I had just left home and in university and lost, yes. I was, no, I was actually in college. I was just lost and trying to find, And I had disappointed my parents by not doing medicine. And now I'm trying to find this creative energy that I really forced myself to do and fought for.

16:29And here's this guy giving me his book on fear and telling me I'm enough, I'm fine. Everything is okay with me. I am not because I walk a certain way, I talk a certain way. My calmness is fine. My perspective is okay. My love for where I'm from is fine. And I should be able to express it and not hold it back. And I think that gave me power, speed. And he really loved me and I loved him like a dad. I adored him. I wanted to be like him. because he was a true artist. He, there was no sense of want, you know, he was comfortable in expressing himself. And he embraced my feminine and masculine and my feminine and my vulnerable energy all at once.

17:28And that was a perfect figure for me at that age. I think I really needed that. And the universe really brought that to me. and I cherished those moments so dearly with him. And so he really pushed me and that book changed my life in a way and I hope one day I can find it and share it but it just kept me at peace for a very long time. it's such a thoughtful and discerning gift to pass on to i one one thing my shrink said to me i asked him something about what was missing from my childhood and he said in an ideal world parents sort of guide you they sort of take you from a to b and i think that was missing and it sounds like Barry came and did that for you he just knew what you needed and gave you this this kind of going through the mirror experience by from from being able to read a book it's such a it's such a brilliant idea you've said you're that you're obsessed with clothes just as long as they're not on me and is this to do with perfectionism and is it easier to perfect someone else rather than yourself so i always remember anthony price the designer anthony price saying well darling we'd never be designers if we had perfect bodies and i thought yeah you're so right this is driven from discontent and kind of the critical voice that's a funny one true i i find it much more exciting to dress somebody else and i i do get excited to dress myself but i think i think the human body is such a beautiful um canvas and having the opportunity to to decorate it and and tell stories with it is beautiful i can i can never see myself so much in those fashion images because it doesn't need to reflect my physical presence, but it does reflect my mind.

19:59It does reflect my collaborator's mind, and that's way more exciting to me. And clothes can be like little toys for a kid, you know, and you get to really be expressive and tell wonderful stories with them. but for my everyday life I I like the simplicity of things and I like color but I always run back to the same silhouette for now it might change a couple of years you just never know but I I like com I like feeling comfortable and and yeah that's how I that's support from fashion neurosis comes from neiman marcus the holidays are approaching and you can let the special people in your life know just how special they are with a gift from neiman marcus even if you have someone who's particularly hard to shop for neiman marcus has lots of categories to help fulfill the perfect gift like gourmet goodies covetable it bags elegant timepieces stunning jewelry, a legendary list of fantasy gifts full of unique whimsical items and much much more and when you gift someone a new wardrobe piece you're letting them know that you see them that you understand what they cherish and feel truly great wearing.

21:29If you need a bit of help you don't need to worry because Neiman Marcus has style advisors who can guide you and make the search for the perfect gift at every price point feel effortless. This holiday season, you can explore a wide range of unique, unforgettable gifts from Neiman Marcus and find something special for each person on your gift list. Because do you ever get shy? And I wondered if you do, what do you do to create some distance when you need it? Yes, I do get shy, but I'm working on it though. And when I'm very shy in public spaces, I think I just run to the bathroom for a little bit.

22:12It's the easiest, or I should just say that now and then people will be like, oh, it's going to the bathroom.

22:22But, you know, I think you find your way. I step out of the room a little bit, get some fresh air, you know, tell myself it's fine. You know, you can hang around. You know, you can, you're funny. You can also crack a joke. Yeah. You know, you can ask somebody about other things, you know, and then you keep it going. You know, it's a little prep talk here and there, but I'm powering through it for sure. And in my industry, you have to be so visual all the time, especially in person. And I'm just doing the best I can with what I got. That sounds like a good strategy. I started to notice when I get shy, I get incredibly unfriendly and literally close down my face.

23:09And I've just noticed this recently and thought, I must stop being like that. Just be shy instead of being so kind of hostile in my manner. Yeah, just be shy. Just let it out. Yeah, it's a nice, I always like it when people are shy. I think it's a human feeling. I'm sure the next person to you is very shy. It's very endearing, I think. But once you break that ice, it's like a long-lost friend sometimes. Just catching up. It can be cute. It can be cute for sure. Because you said you wake up in the morning and start your day by writing. Do you find there are recurring themes? From 5 a.m. to 8 a.m., I think, is Ibis time.

24:01I can wake up, I can write, I can sing, I can go run in the park, read a book if I can. I make the best porridge between 7 to 8 a.m. I like to tell myself I can cook, but I really can't. But I do the best I can anyway between those times. So I can make a cute little breakfast, just listen to good music and read if I can. But those periods are my time and I selfishly got them to my heart. But unless I'm doing a job somewhere and I have to be on set for eight, but if I'm home, I try to keep that for myself selfishly. and it's a very selfish act but once in a while I think it's needed yeah I think those are very um kind of they're the setup aren't they and yeah you need that I find those things are more and more important and they're so strengthening yeah it's almost like a like a happy dose in the on and for yourself and you really dose yourself up with so much of this happy happy energy and then you're ready to just take on the world and and nothing kind of phases me after that to be honest i'm just ready to go let's go what's new what are we doing what's on today because you were at centralst martin's which you described as wild and you said i used to go to church every Sunday and then I became an atheist and I wondered if something had taken the place of God.

25:54I think my newfound freedom. I think, you know, I grew up in a very, very religious household where self-expression was just not something you do. And so even though I had all of this inside of me and yeah and and I sang in the church from the age of four till I was 15 so I had to just I mean church was the only form of expression that I could really express any form of creativity everything else had to hide and do it and when I moved to the UK at 16 I also was not allowed to sing or do anything artistic and I thought okay I'm gonna I'm gonna to do this um i'm gonna just do this degree my parent want me to do which is study to study medicine and and i knew i hated it but i just went through it anyway and i eventually dropped out at 20 at 19 i dropped out i just could not go forward with it it felt like a prison and I felt like I was making the biggest mistake of my life, going to do something I didn't want to do out of the fear of my parents.

27:18But as an immigrant, there are certain periods in your life that you have to just be the most obedient child as you can to get your right to remain in the UK. and so I had to make sure I just did everything I could to not be creative at this point and get my freedom to remain so I can be creative and once I got that, I got the courage to tell my parent, hey, listen, I can't do this and it was much more harder than coming out for me. God, really? Actually, yeah. I think it was much more, I think the level of disappointment to an immigrant parent that have fought so hard and gone through a war. You know, some parent immigrate and maybe they don't have a war so much, but mine came from extreme poverty.

28:18I was born in Big Waf, which is kind of the poorest part of Sierra Leone. It's, you know, there's barely drinking water and electricity. So, you know, at 19, as an immigrant, you're thinking as a 25 year old because you have to just think deeper about every action and how that would disappoint and the triple effect that would get on your life. So it was one of the hardest decisions I had to make, but I could not resist the urge to be creative and to be free. So I did tell my parents I didn't want to study, science and and i ended up in a college university and there was a great guy there called bellwood john bellwood who saw me who saw that i had something and through that i went tost martin's and i'm coming back tost martin's i truly found myself you know i was still living with my parent but I had to dress up as a very hetero, passing, young man.

29:26And then at the nighttime, I was a dancing queen. I was in the clubs in a wedding dress, in a backless, seamless, anything. And all my friends, we all dressed the same. We're just club kids. And I was living these two lives, but it was, and we were both so extreme from each other. but I'm a Gemini. I can find my way around it. But it was fun when I was in the clubs. It was fun when I was at school. I felt so free. It was beautiful. I had a great time and I met the most incredible people that also reassured me that I was not something to be ashamed of or I was not so different. I had a tribe of people that had the same mindset as mine that also fought to be in those spaces and fought for their freedom to live freely how they wanted.

30:37And it was beyond sexuality. It was beyond being queer. It was just having the urge, having the courage to just be.

30:52And I'm so lucky to experience that because that's not the story for so many immigrant kids. Yeah. That is not something that is given. Or my level of courage, sometimes it is beaten out of a lot of immigrant kids. You know, they don't get to live or experience what I've experienced. And I'm so grateful to have fought to experience something else than what was pre-planned for me, or what was my path that I had no say in. Yeah, God. Sorry, that was so deep. No, that's so... It makes so... I mean, you describe it so well, and the difference between choosing what you have this huge desire and craving to do and be and having something planned for you that bears no relation to that.

32:05It's a real, it is incredible that you managed to make your own path. Thank you. and you said that in africa two men could hold hands and it was not because they were gay they were just friends and family and you also said this interesting thing about how masculinity is overemphasized in western politics and entertainment and i wonder what particularly struck your attention about that you know i think when i moved to the uk a lot of things dawned on me that I think I was much more visible as a queer person than I was in Africa. I think everything is so sectionized here. Yeah. Where you're queer, you look like this, you're this, you look like this.

33:00And yeah, I might have wore funny clothes, like, you know, or I might just be the odd kid. But for me, looking back, I think I was just a creative, just a quirky human. And I didn't understand sexuality at all. I was just a little bit different. I just didn't really know what that was yet. And I think in the West, we put so much emphasis on titles and that's one of the big difference. And I did my my papers when I finished St. martinson this sexualization of the black body was my was my dissertation and in it i i i realized when when the west came to africa and maybe some african um people were not wearing when also um covered up but in the west at the same time there was so much rape there's so much yeah there was so much trauma towards women and i realized that well in my societies we might wear a rapper or a miniskirt boys might wear something quite revealing but but there was a level of respect for body you couldn't touch a woman's body without approval there was a there was so much respect for a woman and being nude does not so much emphasize sensuality or sex or total chaos.

34:37And I realized it was all the Western projection of sex on my body that I don't view my body that way. You know, I don't sexualize myself. I just see my body as a beautiful tool like everyone else's. And those are some of the things I was talking about in my paper. And those are the things I also realized that when I was growing up, I could hold hands with my friends. Or I can see boys and girls holding hands, going out. And it was fun. We all danced and do cute stuff. even at the age of 15 I had so many heterosexual friends and but you when you come into the west like two 16 year old boys cannot hold hands as soon as you know there's such a there's such a box around there there's there's already this title or you're this and and there was a sense of self-expression growing up in the Gambia that was cool and it was not rooted in queerness it was rooted in being cool and people really dress up and and when i was watching television as a 16 year old in london you know those kids would be pointed at a square or or dressing dressing and trying to be something you're not because you're from a different neighborhood so all these nuances were really were really crazy to me but i found a way to navigate around them and and i felt more exposed and but i found a way yeah because you're the creative director now of off-white the brand founded by the late Virgil of Lowe.

36:38And I wondered, because lack of confidence is quite a signature trait among designers, and maybe it's why we make things perfect for other people, and I wondered where does your self-doubt crop up the most? You mean taking this job? Well, it's the big... It's a huge mantle, it's a huge... And doubly so the stepping into the shoes of Virgil, who you had a lot of regard and a great relationship with and, you know, to sort of uphold somebody's legacy and create things through their prism. And I just wondered how is that on your shoulders? It's a lot to take on. and I adored Virgil. Virgil for me was the freest black man of my time because he was able to express himself in all forms and he did it freely and he did it without asking for permission and that's even the greatest thing to aspire to be and he did that.

38:08I always say Virgil built the universe and we all were able to find ourselves in his own universe and create things for him and with him and doing those shows with him were incredible because I felt like a four-year-old again with endless imagination. and so taking on that job I I was not so much it didn't it didn't occur to me that I actually took a I mean you can't replace Virgil so so you can't really take the job you can just continue in your own universe that you that you had farmed in his own world and and letting your universe be the next chapter because it was because i'm sure he was happy with the with the work we did together and i'm sure my universe played a little role in his own universe and so taking the job was was stepping into the job was scary and and it occurred to me how scary it was the day I said yes and the day it got announced.

39:22Gosh. I really was so terrified and but I believe in time. I am so fortunate to create with such a huge legacy and within that legacy I'm finding my own language. I can only be IB and I'm so happy to have the courage to be myself within all of it. And for me, that gets me going. And he created for me one of the most incredible brand of my lifetime, a brand for the people, a brand that speaks to the people. And it is not based on elitism. It is based on a fair platform. And those are all my upbringing. and those things align closely to me and I can only create honest clothes and I can only create with my true, with my lived experience.

40:35I cannot be anything else than Ibrahim Kamara. And I'm excited. every season I get to make a collection I'm so excited for the opportunity to make with not the most but with the best people and I wonder when you dress are there things you consciously try to hide or reveal about yourself not anymore I am always wearing a short sleeve like a thingy but today for some reason it's cold and I get cold so quickly. So I need to behave myself. But no, I'm at an age where I truly embrace every single part of my body. And me, I am happy in my skin. I grew up in a space where being this dark skin was not acceptable.

41:37You know, you had to hide and it was made fun of. and I am at a point where I love all of it. I love how some people say you look African. I'm like, what else would I want to look like? I love it. It's the best compliment I could get. It's the motherland. It's the origin of hope and beauty and style. and I come from a lineage of people that are so wholesome and because of them I get to walk this earth with this vessel and I hope I'm doing right by them. I'm taking care of this vessel the best I can, of course. And no, I don't hide so much anymore. I am my body's my expression as well.

42:38I'm happy in it. Yeah, I'm happy in it. And if you fancy someone and don't like something they're wearing, does it kill your attraction to them? Not necessarily.