FEBEN
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The London-based, Feben Vemmenby, freshly graduated from Central Saint Martins, has already made herself to be heard with her first two collections, showcased at London Fashion Week. The emerging sustainable brand made a strong utterance, a political one this time: exploring and reclaiming Black identity through surrealist designs. Feben describes her suit as “an act of confrontation – it’s me saying, ‘I belong here, other Black women belong here, and this is a suit we can wear.’” During the pandemic, she has designed a T‑shirt - featuring Black 10 dolls, each wearing a miniature version of one of her ‘It’s Not Right But It’s OK looks’, sat at a table - for which the proceeds had been donated to Black Minds Matter. Her political activism joins her ethical commitment: for this project, she used and rivisited the scraps from her MA collection to create her own characters.
“Moving forward we have to be more sustainable than ever”, she says and she gives proof of this witnessing through the great sartorial and artisanal know-how that she commits in her collections. She has collaborated with a community of Ghanaian artisans for the creation of the hand-crocheted beaded tote bags. And for the jewellery of her collection, she has worked with Jakhu Studio, a label that supports artisans and country’s craftswomen in Peru.
