In the atelier

A different photo shoot than the ones I usually do.

This has been a pretty amazing week, with trips to get fabric for work, attendance of social media week lagos events, and a photo shoot that I had been conceiving in my mind’s eye for months.

It’s hard to know how everything would come together: this top, those pants, that hairstyle, those ad-hoc aso-oke earrings, that backdrop, this camera lens versus that one… until you’re there, on set, just click-click-clicking.

Akor, the model brought it. This was a different photo shoot than the ones I usually do, because it was as much about the clothes as the bags. A Minku bag and clothing collection. I can’t wait to present the full lookbook. These are some grainy shots of the camera viewer, because I couldn’t really wait to say, “here, dear Minku loyalist, is a sneak peek before everyone else gets to know, of what you can expect to see on the Minku social media pages, web site, and hopefully some press, in the time to come.” So I hope you’re liking it all as much as I am.

Model: Akor
Photographer: Kunmi

Listening to the Cut the Rope mobile game soundtrack.

Getting some much-deserved yoghurt (Akor) and vanilla ice-cream (me) on our return from the photo shoot site. When I was a kid, the best part of church was after-church when my parents would buy my siblings and I these ice-creams from the ice-cream bicycle man. It was always a bummer when our favorite flavor was sold out. Still is.

This is me wishing for snow.

Winter is here for real and like many in the Mediterranean, I’m in full-on denial about how cold it can get on a January afternoon in these parts. So for instance, today I ran work errands in a thin jacket over just two clothing layers. A thin down jacket it was, yes — albeit one of those featherweight ones made with ultralight backpackers in mind. I should reach back for the proper one I stashed away last week, thinking the worst of the cold was over. It isn’t.

48°F (9°C) is cold, no? This is me wishing for snow. I’d go to the park, lay facing the skies, make snow angels. Be competitive about it because I have the longest arms of my friends, designated human selfie-stick. Maybe we’ll have enough snow that we can make balls, snowballs, and throw them at one another before they sublimate in our gloved palms. It hasn’t happened in all my winters in this city, but a girl can dream.

There’s a lot of activity in the now, including preparations for 080 Barcelona Fashion Week’s Fall/Winter 2017 edition that starts at month’s end. My favorite designer isn’t showing, again, but I’m determined to find new designers to root for, photograph ouevre of, write about. I’ll also be doing a press round of Barcelona Fashion Summit 2017. So, similar to my joint coverage of Lagos Fashion & Design Week’s Fashion Business Series and fashion shows in the February/March 2016 issue of Yonderland, you can look forward to a concise report of both events.

Pictured: Barcelona Fashion Week coverage in past Yonderland issues. To read either report, tap on the image.

Things have been pretty amazing here, and work has been interspersed with not-work. I’ve been waiting for La-La Land to be released in Barcelona, and we’re (finally!) going to see it this weekend. This la-la-lady can’t wait.

MinkuAt080_2014-15b Pictured: An old poster (2014) announcing our participation in the Fashion Week pop-up section.

Out on a disorderly artistic limb

For my most recent birthday, some of my friends presciently gave me a sketchpad.

Although I thought nothing of it at the time, I recently took a break from bag making to return to my first love: art. In the new year, I hope to develop my own illustrative style, and I’m glad that stylistically, illustration seems to give me a broad space in which to explore. I hope to stay in this space and explore it a bit longer.

There will still be bags, not to worry.

Happy new year!

Minku

Listening to Lead Belly’s Christmas is A-Coming.

We got the funk

I’m excited that it’s Friday. We’re about to go and watch a funk band (the guy loves funk :-)) and I’m happy to put away work and go and have a weekend. Or at least a Friday night. I’ve been working on a few things, including the FW2017 collection. Yes, time flies.

When I was in university, I used to count time in semesters. Now I count it in fashion seasons. Here is one of the most recent things I’ve been working on:

MinkuWosanBucketBag_Main WosanBucketBag_interiorDetail_b

It’s called the Wosan bag. One of the ideas I’ve been toying with for the new collection is the idea of love, and what we do for those we love. So perhaps we are excited to see them laugh, so we try to make jokes to make them laugh (palerin), or we nurse them to health when they’re ill (wosan) or we forgive them when they forget something important to us (dariji) or we sing to them or with them (korin), or support them when they’re rooting for their favourite football team (tilehin). It’s been a bit of a shift working with verbs instead of nouns for the names of the bags, but that’s just what I’m feeling at the moment.

Ok, so we saw the Hungarian GP on Sunday. I was quite unexcited to see the race, because something interesting had happened at qualifying the day before, but my <3 was like well, I think Hamilton will win the race, and he did! His fifth win at Hungaroring. And with this, he now leads the championship points table. German GP this Sunday before August break (pardon my error in the previous post, where I thought Hungaroring was the last race before the break).

Well it’s sweltering hot and funk is good for working up a sweat, so off we go. Are you liking the Wosan bag? Which colours of bags would you like to see more of this season? I personally can’t get enough of that pink…

Love,

Minku

Work, play, and dreaming of the weekend

I worked all of yesterday. Today, too. I am simultaneously working on four bags. You can see one I completed on Monday, here, and also below.

OkinBag_back2

The extra lovely weekend prepped me for such a busy week. On Sunday afternoon, we hung out in plazas watching castellers and drinking canned juice. Then we met up with friends for tacos. On Monday evening, we went to an outdoor cinema where we lay on the grass with maybe 800 other people and saw a movie we had both seen before, and both love. Tuesday came and I started prepping for work and then Wednesday came and I woke up early and started to work and then today too, though I let myself sleep in a bit longer.

I’m making progress, and it is all looking good. You can’t rush this work, though. For two of the current projects, I’m designing as I make, and you can’t rush design. It’s a series of decisions that need you to be well-fed and well-rested and just chill. So yeah, I’ve been having some Zen days of creating, but when it’s all done and mailed, I’ll also just have some Zen days of serious resting.

This heat is not helping things. I don’t know what it is called, but the air here has been stagnant since yesterday. As in, you open the balcony door, but no breeze. Please, summer, have some chill :-)

Speaking of chill, well on Saturday, we will go to a friend’s birthday party. I’m pretty excited — maybe just the thought of taking a break, seeing this friend again, meeting the new people that will be at the party, and exploring a neighborhood with them after tapas. It’s Formula 1 on Sunday :-D :-D :-D, Hungraroingaroing in Hungary. Ok, the circuit is actually called Hungaroring; still, it reminds me of Antananarivo, where I have to consciously learn how many times to repeat the middle syllables. After Sunday’s race, the drivers are going on… August break, he he. ‘August break’ is funny to me because it is the name of a poem we had to read in Junior Secondary 1 (like 7th grade), regarding the rainy season in Nigeria, which runs from April to October, with a break in August. When I start cheesing at my own jokes, it’s time for bed (just kidding, it’s something I always do). I hope you’ve been having a fulfilling week.

New Yonderland issue now out

The new issue of Yonderland is now out, and I wanted to invite you to take a look (or better still, give it a read :-)).

It’s fashion week in Barcelona and yesterday, a friend and I went to see some shows. I want to do a review shortly. For now, recovering from the work that is the production of each issue of Yonderland. Oh, and I saw Joy today, the movie with Jennifer Lawrence. Reminder that entrepreneurship is not an easy journey, but can be so worth it.

Love,

Minku

Where to buy Minku

I am working on the Fall/Winter 2016 collection, and I thought I should share the list of places to shop our collections.

For Fall/Winter 2016, you can expect bags in that nude pink shade that I like so much. And also bags in brown and black. I’m reworking some old favourites, and also exploring new shapes. Of course there will be backpacks for men and women. Some of it is still that weathered-look Eleko-Wave processed leather. And the rest is classic shapes and lines. They will be lined in some of the finest aso-oke cotton fabrics.

As is becoming almost customary, there will be items of clothing. I make these, really just for the models to have something to wear for the lookbook. They really tie in the Minku aesthetic and style, which I am refining every season (this will be our eleventh collection!).

If you are in Lagos, you may already know that you can get Minku in Stranger. And we continue to work on capsule collections for a store in San Sebastian (Spain), which is undergoing a rebranding and whose new brand will be unveiled soon. We’re also in talks with a Barcelona store, with more details coming soon.

Then of course there is our web site.

Besides leather, I’ve been experimenting with paper — making notebooks, to be precise. Selecting and hand-binding papers has got to be one of the most Zen activities around. I get to use exotic snake skins, gold-toned leather, vegetable-tanned leather, and more in quite unconventional ways. And where I deem fit, to combine them with aso-oke fabrics. See a selection of our hand-bound notebooks here.

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