His graduate collection, titled You Don’t Fear the Cold, represented years of hard work finally coming to fruition – following a Foundation at Kingston College, and consecutive BA and MA courses at CSM. “My BA was a bit of a culture shock, especially not doing my Foundation at CSM,” Ewusie says. “I feel like a lot of my first and second year was catching up and understanding what was expected of me. It was a lot of discovery, but I really liked that period because I was very experimental and figured out what I liked and didn’t like.” This amenability paid dividends in the final collection, a sophisticated offering that was slick, polished, and, most importantly, chic.
Despite this, the collection had an unexpectedly commonplace source of inspiration. “My mum had these pouffes and she told me that she had stuffed them with her clothes from the 80s instead of using fluff which I found so funny,” the designer shares. “For the first time ever, I opened them and I was so amazed by all the clothes she had in there. Lots of traditional Ghanaian prints in 80s silhouettes, but also a lot of Western sportswear.” From there, the concept of the collection – a conversation between generations – was born. “The idea is to respect and acknowledge where you come from, but understand that you’re different from your mother and that you have your own way of doing things,” he adds.
This manifested in an ombre brushed mohair jumper in hot pink and red and artfully draped leather – donated by Chanel – fashioned into oversized outerwear or sliced into strips and transformed into a pinstripe pattern. Elsewhere, laser-cut patterns directly referenced a traditional Nsubura pattern found among his mother’s archive which continued to influence the final collection. “I like to do a technique where I’m referencing traditional wrap-around dressing and drape as if it’s cloth,” Ewusie says. “There’s a black mini dress that was created out of two coats and it’s the idea that there’s a girl coming back from a night out and is trying to hide her party dress.”
