“Liberation” is the name of the Ahluwalia spring 2021 collection. Straight to the point: In 2020, the collective rise of young Black and South Asian British creative talent is the most exciting phenomenon in London fashion. Add the simultaneous awareness of actioning sustainability in the city, and over in her Wandsworth studio, there’s Priya Ahluwalia, bringing the celebration of her Nigerian-Indian heritage to the fire.
During lockdown and the explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement, Ahluwalia defied the limits of confinement by partnering with Dennis McInnes, the Lagos-born graphic designer in London. “He had all these archival Nigerian political posters, newspaper clippings, and photographs of protests in the ’60s, and we worked together on making prints from them.” Totemic symbols resonating with the African diaspora appear across her denim and jersey, while patterns inspired by the infographics of W.E.B. Du Bois got worked in throughout.
As a young menswear brand, Ahluwalia is about exercising sustainable content by stealthily making it desirable. Her look is patchworked from upcycled fabrics dismantled from garments sourced from the London recycling company Re-Skinned. Under lockdown, she also went to her local market in Tooting, supporting the community’s sellers of vibrant end-of-roll materials. Her laser-printed denims are made in Morocco in a factory which uses a closed-loop water system, minimizing environmental damage.
There’s more in her line than she photographed; she has a continuing collection of multi-striped patchworked shirting to her name as well. There’s plenty of skill in it—the smooth ability of her sewers to jigsaw together the geometries of disparate fabrics is impressive. Ultimately, though, it’s the character of the brand, and the positive, problem-solving energy of this young woman that speaks loudest to a generation determined to push through change. Liberation says it.
