It’s been quite a year for Priya Ahluwalia. The young designer is at the vanguard of the industry-wide move towards a more sustainable approach to manufacturing clothes, a champion of promoting local working communities, and the most recent recipient of the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II award for British Design.
Yet amidst the accolades and awards of the past few months, Ahluwalia still found time to catch up on her major source of inspiration: reading. "I devoured Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, an epic novel set in 18th Century Ghana about two half-sisters and their descendants in Africa and America. It got me thinking about colonialism, social injustice and how travel and movement affects us all – physically and spiritually." she says. "Then I started looking at migration maps, which led me to the movement of objects; how precious gems from Nigeria are transported around the world. Then, onto the migration paintings of early 20th Century artist Jacob Lawrence, and the rich, primary colour palette of artist Kerry James Marshall."
A self-professed visual magpie, Ahluwalia admits it was the cultural and political impact of the work of these two artists that really got her juices flowing "When I got to the chapter in Gyasi’s book about the Harlem Renaissance, it struck a chord. Lawrence documented this exciting merging of cultures in the New York of the Twenties and Thirties. And, Marshall today continues to celebrate the rich complexity of ‘Blackness’. All these references informed my decision to make a film – and clothes – inspired by this massive cultural melting pot."
Indeed, it was her filmmaking moment at Gucci’s virtual fashion film festival last autumn, Guccifest, that led her to another young director, Stephen Isaac Wilson. The subsequent collaboration, an intensely coloured, dialogue-free two minute short with an original score by sax and clarinet jazz musician Cktrl, is a carefully choreographed presentation of the new Ahluwalia season. The emphasis is now on versatility. Casual puffer jackets are reversible and adjustable; sporty polo tops and striped ombre shorts in dark jewel shades are made from recycled water bottles; hybrid sweatshirts fashioned from deadstock jersey and knits, and her signature denim shapes are reworked Levis, all appliqued or embroidered with a new four afro comb emblem and new Greek symbol-inspired logo. It is another Ahluwalia masterclass in hybridisation and upcycling.
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