CRWNMUSE: Diasporic Dream Team Learon and Chioma
Somewhere in New Jersey, huddled on the floor in front of the TV, Chioma Obiegbu and Learon Coleman sit together on a floor beaming. We are on IG Live and chatting about their phenomenal week where their photo featuring cornrows accented with bright bottle caps and bottle-cap head piece from the series “Cantas, A Nigerian Story” was shared so many times that Erykah Badu commissioned a piece which she wore on her current tour and later, an editorial for InStyle in which she styled herself.
Erykah Badu wears head piece designed by Chioma for InStyle magazine.
Learon and Chioma are a distinctive duo and partnership both romantic and creative, where dreams, creative direction, exceptional stories and pointed photography collide. Among the heap of fresh photogs pocking around on the scene, creative director team Chioma and Learon have found a way to move spirit, history, voice and multi-layered storytelling—oftentimes speaking to Chioma’s African upbringing—into crisp and colorful images taken by the talented Learon.
During their takeover week, we shared a video featuring a musical bottle-capped headdress, that when shaken, resembles rain on a tin roof. The bottle-capped piece is part musical, part art piece and a keeper of memories. In the caption written for the story, Chioma writes, “Growing up back home in Nigeria, kids were so innovative. Can’t afford toys? "No wahala." (Translation: "No problem.) My favorite to play with my brothers was the bottle soda caps which we called “counters or cantas” as we used them to learn how to count in math. We would use these counters to play finger-soccer by pushing the counters against a tiny paper ball through our index finger/thumb.” The goal for the series, she writes, “is to show the beauty of reinvention and how we can turn what is usually considered trash into something spectacular.”
At the time of our IG Live, the creative team answer questions about modeling (Chioma with four years of experience under her belt), creative discipline, the pleasures of working as a well-blended team, the art of setting yourself apart from the crowd, art versus craft, African American and African differences and the excitement of learning that a viewer’s favorite in their editorials can often differ from their own. We also dive into their joint venture Unsigned Models: an international effort dedicated to scouting male, female and non-binary freelance models of color with unique faces. Through Unsigned Models the team’s mission is to feature a multifaceted view of diversity beyond typical color lines and European beauty standards.
When it comes to art meeting craft, stories like “Recycled” is the introduction. Using re-purposed Forever 21 bags, the outfit moves from plastic to fashion purpose. And no story communicates purpose within the inanimate object better than their series “Ghana Must Go.” These notable plaid durable plastic plaid bags can be found most anywhere, but often seen in metropolises being used as an “everything bag”—for laundry, groceries or storage. The team writes, “These bags that you now see in fashion, are sold in stores such as Topshop, Opening Ceremony and high-end designers like Louis Vuitton are originally known as “Ghana Must Go” bags in most of West Africa. It is also humorously called “Efiewura Sua Me” in Ghana, meaning “help me carry my bag” as there’s always someone at the bus station, market, etc who needs help moving them. (Koranteng’s Toli, 2007).”
In the editorial, the bags are repurposed into a stunning dress and handbag made by Chioma’s mother. Although difficult to sew through the material, the production, and its editorial was a modern recreation of a setting seemingly from the front porch of an African woman—understated makeup, bare feet, the bag taking the place of traditional dress patterns, the use of a lawn chair and dirt flooring—contextualizing the origins of a bag which blurs the lines of fashion while paying homage to its history without capitalism or pretense.
Together, the nuanced details of their storytelling, treatment of texture, and their ability to pull intensity from their subject is what has skyrocketed their success exponentially from features I-D to walking in NYFW.
To see what Learon and Chioma have up next, follow them below:
