Meet Ama Avoh, a fashion textiles graduate of Middlesex university. Ama’s final year collection explores a variety of themes, from her French and West African heritage to her love of comic books. “As a mixed-media knitwear designer, I created knitted and embroidered textiles that the celebrate the rich aesthetic of my mixed-race background as well as tongue-in-cheek energy of comic book superheroes,” she says. Read on to learn more about Ama and her work!
What is the most valuable thing you have learnt at university?
I think I have learnt a lot about my identity and aesthetic as a designer. I came onto my course not really sure who I was as a designer. I had been eager to study fashion for as long as I could remember. Coming onto my degree I was quite focussed on developing my fashion design skills, however doing a fashion textiles degree taught me to be a more well-rounded designer and aware of the importance of textiles in fashion and to help develop my aesthetic as a designer and realise what is important to me. Particularly in my final year I got to learn a lot about myself and my heritage and how proud I am of it. My degree has given me the confidence to see an idea go from a thought to being executed through research and development.
I learnt just how much I am capable of doing, especially when having to completing my final year at home during a pandemic and having to make use of the resources around me. University taught me how to develop any idea and how to relentlessly pursue it through many different kinds of media. I now truly feel confident in calling myself a fashion and textile designer, something I do not think would have been possible before my degree. University has taught me that it is okay to fail. I have learnt from my failures time and time again. I now feel confident in my failures! In all my fallen knits or dodgy fittings they have taught me how to troubleshoot problems and fix them. I think this is the most valuable skill I can graduate with as in the past I have been afraid to try in case I fail whereas now I tell myself, “what is the worst that can happen?”. I now know just how hard I am willing to work to realise my dream and I do not think that would have been possible if I did not embark on the journey of the past three years.
Tell us about your current projects and work, what have you been working on?
The images I have selected are from my graduate collection. My BA Graduate Collection centres around my creation of a post-colonial superhero, inspired by my French-West African heritage and my love of Marvel graphics. I wanted to explore the cultural differences between the Norman countryside in France and West Africa specifically Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. I decided to link my final collection to my dissertation. My dissertation was focussed on the history of French colonisation of West Africa and how this led to cultural appropriation in French fashion in the twentieth century but we still see in fashion today. Learning about the rich history of my heritage was really eye opening and doing the extensive research for my dissertation influenced my designs. I was keen for my final collection to be a celebration of my cultural heritage referencing mainly primary research and executed with sensitivity.
A lot of my research included my own photographs from trips to France and West Africa with many members of my family in my research sketchbook and portfolio. This helped my collection to feel as authentic to me as possible. A lot of this research helped define textures and design development. I decided to include research and references into 1970s and 80s Marvel comics as these are a passion of mine and I am an avid comic book reader. I decided to combine my interest of my cultural heritage and love of comic books into one collection because why not! Marvel comic book research had great influence over my striking silhouettes and colour palette. I wanted my collection to be bold celebration of all the things I love. As a mixed-media knitwear designer I created knitted and embroidered textiles that the celebrate the rich aesthetic of my mixed-race background as well as tongue-in-cheek energy of comic book superheroes. Since completing my final year, I have been focussed on developing my hand embroidery skills by setting myself mini projects.
What form does your project take?
My graduate collection would have been a collection of garments made up in to 6 looks. I was in the process of toiling and starting to construct my collection just as lockdown begun. I am a menswear knitwear designer however, I choose not to restrict myself within that. I use knitwear as part of my designs however, I love working with woven fabrics too especially for surface embellishment and fabric manipulation. I use knitted textiles a lot in my designs and I am comfortable developing textiles as I have experience weaving and screen printing too. My specialism is knitwear. I love the total control you get through creating your own textile as it means you are completely in charge of the properties and can from start to finish of the design process really create something that is truly perfect and unique to your research and development. I like to work into my textiles as I do not see a piece of fabric I have just created as the end result; I love to work into my knit through fabric manipulation by inserting elastic and boning into in order to manipulate the stretch properties of knit or even trying to remove as much stretch from knit as possible.
Throughout lockdown I have developed my hand embroidery skills and this has helped inform some of the designs in my graduate collection. As it was not possible to physically create my final collection at university anymore, I chose to create looks on a mini mannequin inspired by collages done on comic books using my textile samples. This gave me freedom to create bold silhouettes without worrying about the constraints of pattern cutting and allowed me to be a lot freer in my creations. I found this really fun to create and I think it is a fun addition to my graduate collection.
How have you evolved as a young creative while studying / working?
I came onto my BA straight from my foundation course convinced that I was a womenswear print designer and three years later I will now graduate as a menswear knitwear/embroidery designer. Coming onto my course I was not really sure who I was as a designer and now I have evolved whilst studying to be more confident in my designs and not being afraid to create bold silhouettes and use a wide range of colour, through the guise of menswear and knitwear. I think interning in my second year at Victor Wang really helped open my eyes to see what was possible to create in terms of pattern cutting. I helped to create the most dynamic silhouettes and finally felt confident after my three months there to use these skills in my own work. I now feel like I can actually create a silhouette I have designed and I think there is no greater freedom as a design student.
Before my BA I had a only used a domestic knitting machine a handful of times and now I am very confident in using them as well as double bed Dubied industrial machines. I believe learning how to incorporate textiles as part of my design process and make textiles as a response to research has helped me to evolve to be a well rounded designer. I feel a lot more confident in my surface embellishment with hand embroidery. I am interested in using couture techniques in my work and I believe my use of textiles has evolved the most in the past three years to be a lot more centre stage in my work too. Using my cultural heritage as inspiration in my final collection has helped me to evolve as a designer who has always been proud of their culture. I would like to bring aspects of my culture to every piece of work I do as it is fundamental to me as a designer. I feel confident in using my culture as inspiration for design and I would like as many people as possible to see different cultures within fashion and I believe by putting my work out there, I am hoping to shine a light on just a couple of the beautiful diverse cultures all over the world.
What are the messages and themes behind your project that you want people to take away? Do explore any topics like diversity, sustainability or politics in your work?
I think within my work I explore topics like diversity by using very personal inspiration like my cultural heritage Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire as references. I think this represents diversity as I am trying to shine a light on a different way of life that is typically not recognised within Western fashion. I have West African wax cloth print within my final collection. Wax cloth is typically associated with Africa despite having ties with Holland and Indonesia Colonialism; the history of wax cloth is a key part of my research within my dissertation and how many years after colonisation West Africa has reclaimed as their own. I decided to use the wax print as a signifier of Africa and as a symbol to reclaim its “Africaness”. These wax prints were all donated to me from family members and close family friends. The bold patterns are loud and that is something I wanted to be key within my collection; bright coloured coloured textiles all coming together.
I used the themes of my dissertation to help me create a post colonial superhero. This superhero came from my research of marvel comic books and cultural heritage. I wanted to celebrate my West African heritage by having a superhero to represent Africa. Throughout my degree I have become more aware of the importance of sustainability. The fashion industry really has a lot of work to do and the last thing I want to do as a young graduate is help to contribute to the desolation of the environment. As a knitwear designer, I aim to use yarns that are good for the environment like wool and silk which is biodegradable and cotton which does not contribute to harmful plastics in the ocean. In my collection, I designed a massive patchwork coat inspired by
The incredible Hulks muscles which would have been made up of failed samples, tension swatches and development knits to ensure nothing goes to waste. As most of collection was knitted, I made sure to fully fashion most of the garments to ensure as little waste as possible of yarn too. In my third year of my degree, my friends and I decided to start an instagram account called @fallenknits to celebrate those awful times when your knit falls off the machine, ruining your sample. We decided to keep all of our fallen knits in a box and at the end of the year make an art piece to not only celebrate “failures” but also ensure no extra waste goes in the bin.
What’s an aspect of the fashion industry that you’re passionate about fixing or having a positive impact on?
Within the fashion industry I am passionate about having more POC and diversity within design teams. I am such a huge fan of fashion and I would love to be creative director of a fashion brand one day. When looking at fashion week I am always in awe of the fashion on display but I do not believe there are enough creative directors of European brands who POC. I would love to see more designers who look like me within the industry so that we can start to see more authenticity in the influences fashion portrays. Fashion has historically loved to take aspects of black culture without permission or recognition, something I looked into the history of in my dissertation.
I would love to see black people celebrating their own culture in fashion brands in a way that would be respectful and a celebration of culture, without being derivative as it has in the past. I think in general fashion needs to be much more diverse and inclusive of all types of people. An aspect of fashion I have recently started to explore is gender neutral fashion. I spent my first year of my degree designing womenswear clothing as that felt like the norm for me, it only occurred to me to try menswear when a tutor assumed that I was a menswear designer based on a drawing of my design. Now having completed my degree, I believe strict gendered terms for clothing is unnecessary and that anyone should wear what they please. I would love for the fashion calendar to reflect this. In my opinion 6 shows a year is way too many for the large brands and they could definitely double up shows without needing to be so strict in their definitions for menswear and womenswear. Having less shows would be infinitely better for the environment and allow for truly meaningful fashion to be created without having to be dictated by fleeting trends.
What is your plan for the future?
I would like to develop on my research in my dissertation about cultural appropriation of west African culture from French fashion at an MA level. As I did not get to complete my final collection at university without access to the knit machines and linkers, I would further develop my concept and design an even better collection. I want to explore the term post colonial superhero in more depth this time and really try to think about what it means to me and a designer.
Before I do my MA I would like to gain experience working in the fashion industry as a design assistant to develop my design skills before I go back to focus on my own work. I think it is hard to think about the future at the moment during a pandemic but I am optimistic about entering the fashion industry after the pandemic and I hope to enter and contribute to a fashion industry that is more open and diverse to POC. I would love to be a role model for young designers eventually in the future, like Grace Wales Bonner and Olivier Rousteing are to me, working with massive French fashion brands and inspiring young designers like me.