Ib Kamara
Is Ib Kamara a stylist, a magazine editor, a photographer, a filmmaker or a fashion designer?
The correct answer is: it’s limiting to think that way. Who cares? Certainly not Ib, a notably elegant and friendly man who multitasks his way through an array of boundary-pushing projects. He was born in Sierra Leone and grew up in the London club scene. Now he heads the magazine ‘Dazed’ and is in charge of Off-White, his late mentor Virgil Abloh’s invention. What a trajectory, and it’s only the start.
From Fantastic Man n° 36 – 2022
Text by PAUL FLYNN
Self-portraits by IB KAMARA
In the makeshift canteen of a converted-aircraft-hangar film studio situated on a nondescript ring road outside Enfield, north London, visionary stylist Ib Kamara is talking me through his early history in nightclubs. Ib is in Enfield for two days to style a campaign for Swedish high street giant H&M with his closest photographer ally, Rafael Pavarotti. Ib’s clients include Burberry and Louis Vuitton, the luxury label at which he got his break after Virgil Abloh DM’ed him on Instagram to ask if Ib would like to style the Spring and Summer 2021 menswear show. “Where I come from, styling a Vuitton show is not what you do,” he says. In April this year, in the wake of Virgil’s early death at 41, Ib was announced as the new art and image director at the late designer’s own label, Off-White. “I’ve been very lucky,” he says. Luck finds the lucky. “I like that,” he nods. “That’s good.”
The lighting in the hangar is calming and low, the mood unhurried. Ib is wearing a vest, drinking hot water and lemon. Intermittently, a polite assistant will appear to usher him away from the conversation to have him offer adjustments to a model or give his golden seal of approval on what is happening in front of the camera. Ib Kamara’s presence is considered, certain and gentle. He is 32 years old, almost the same age as ‘Dazed’, the influential youth culture and fashion title of which he has been editor-in-chief since the start of last year.
Ibrahim Kamara was born in Sierra Leone. When he was young, he and his family were forced to flee the country’s civil war and moved to Gambia. When Ib was aged 16 the family moved once more, this time to England, ending up in Thamesmead, the sprawling ’60s southeast London estate once considered the height of British futurism but long since neglected. The family’s plan was for young Ibrahim to become a doctor. “I came into that period where there were a lot of youth stabbings in London,” he says. “It didn’t personally affect me. But I saw the culture that was here at that time.”
He says the most frightening aspect of his new home was simultaneously its most enticing. “That you could really be whatever you wanted to be. And I hadn’t really thought much about that in Africa. There was always a set plan.” He abandoned his plans for medical studies and fell accidentally into magazines, interning at proactive Brixton initiative Live, a publishing outlet designed to open doors for kids in a media industry they might assume was shutting them out. “It was a bit chaotic. Because to be whatever you want to be… Those are big options.”
Pop culture happened to Ib in reverse. He knew what Rihanna sounded like before arriving in London but had no idea of the phenomenal complementary visual portfolio that brought her talent to life. The complete picture blew his mind. “I’d only had access to CNN and BBC growing up,” he says. He talks about news anchors like pop stars. “The world was falling down. I saw 9/11 on TV. I was 11 and I spent hours analysing that. I was into every anchor on CNN, I digested the news and it affected the way I think.”
Ib’s childhood news obsession soon merged seamlessly with his sudden understanding of image and the power of popular culture. This central premise runs through all of Ib’s work now. “The news can be quite negative. It’s quite graphic. And it makes you scared. But it also fundamentally allows you to understand how the world works and has incredible reach. When I came to England and pop culture was pushed directly in my face, I dissected what I needed from it. I left what I didn’t think was for me. I started to think, ‘What if I could communicate something to the world? How could I do that in a beautiful way?’”
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The first nightclub Ib ever went to was in Vauxhall. “I’m so embarrassed to say it,” he laughs. “But it was called Hustlers vs Divas.” He raises an eyebrow. “I know. Terrible. But I was fab in there. Living my best life. When I came to England, there were a lot of things that I’d never done before.”
Aside from a couple of false starts of the Hustlers vs Divas ilk, nightclubs felt like a natural place to nurture Ib’s brilliant young mind. The epiphanies came quickly. “All of a sudden, I was in a club. Then I was a club kid.” While studying at Central Saint Martins, where he enrolled onto the Fashion Communication and Promotion pathway in 2012, he found his people. Ib soon ascended to the more discerning parties of Dalston, east London: abject, fabulous, diffident, queer, and full of fashion and brutal humour. For a spell he made rent DJing with his classmate and friend Pierre M’Pelé, also known as Pam Boy and now head of editorial content at ‘GQ France’, at the spectacularly decadent, roving Dalston party, PDA – one that is often left out of the pivotal London nightclub graph. “It was Black,” he notes.
By then in control of his club kid persona, Ib once turned up at PDA as the clock chimed midnight, carrying an umbrella and wearing a charity shop wedding dress that he’d customised. Friends carried the train behind him, as if he were royalty. He implicitly understood the potency of a look. “It’s the ultimate couture, the ultimate self-expression. Everyone stops and looks. It changed how I saw everything,” he says. “Looking back, wow, we went everywhere. We crashed parties in Paris. We were poor kids, from no money. But we were so passionate about whatever we were doing.”
Sometimes when Ib Kamara gets lost in a story, his eyes float up. He is a quietly passionate man. “We used to get the coach to Paris,” he continues, “crash on a friend’s living-room floor, then crash a Givenchy show with no invites.” He intuited the value of nightlife in all its glories. “There’s a passion in kids that grew up in the United Kingdom, specifically with kids who grew up in backgrounds with no access,” he says. “When you don’t have it, you want to see it. There’s only so much you can see on TV. At some point you have to go and see it yourself, experience it. Being in this free-thinking environment allowed me to realise that I can be whatever I wanted to be, if I put enough work into it.”
All that energy was about to be transferred to his professional life. Just as Ib Kamara was discovering his true self in the night, his future advocate Virgil Abloh was connecting explicit links between the nightlife and high fashion, first at Off-White, then with his ground-breaking menswear work at Vuitton. “Absolutely,” he nods, “when Virgil entered the scene there was an elevation. You saw it visually. Virgil was so inspiring to me. He created this space to be completely free to style the clothes into his universe.”
For a brand like Off-White, Ib makes perfect sense. He understands exactly where commerce and counterculture intersect. He is also the kind of fearless, multitasking individual who will be able to follow the Abloh model of running a fashion house. He is, to date, a stylist, an editor, a photographer, a filmmaker and a furniture designer.
“I’m always open to trying any medium,” he says. “And that was one of the joys of working with Virgil, because he could transcend into many different directions and it was always good. And I respect people who take a risk. I pick up a camera and photograph myself because I know how I want to be photographed. I just directed my first music video, for my friends Tshegue. I want to write TV shows. I want to make films. I want to do so many more things that people who look like me or come from the background that I come from do not necessarily have the space to do, and I think Virgil really ignited that in me.”
To date, Ib remains the sole named appointment at Off-White, but what seems clear is that the running of the label will be a collaborative effort. Andrea Grilli, the CEO of Off-White, described it as a “collective of creative minds that represent the best in their category and have a strong and personal connection with Virgil,” in a statement given to ‘Vogue’ in April this year.
“When it comes to Virgil, no one can truly replace him,” Ib says. “It’s really tricky to describe my role even though I’m so involved in Off-White at the moment. For now I’m comfortable with the curiosity and the vagueness around it, because I’m trying to understand it for myself. It’s complex. We’re also dealing with a loss. And that loss is really felt and it takes time to work that out.”
This doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking long and hard about the direction he will take the brand in. “That’s a lot of responsibility, if I’m honest,” he says. “I’m extremely humbled to do something there because Virgil believed in me and gave me huge opportunities. I want Off-White to stand the test of time, to compete creatively and intellectually. I’m excited for what it can be. I want it to be just as successful as every other fashion house in this universe. I think it has the potential for that because Virgil was so ahead of his time. He created a loved brand that connects to young people.”
What is certain is that his role will propel him once again to new grounds, allowing him to expand from image creation into something else. This time not as an external consultant and stylist, but as someone shaping a brand and its collections from the inside. His role is indicative of the requirements of leading a modern fashion house: a role that hinges increasingly less on one’s individual talent for crafting garments and more on one’s genius for assembling teams, having a vision and steering the ship unerringly towards fabulous and captivating results. But also for crucially knowing how to sell them to an audience. In a senior role, whether by his hand or a collective process, Ib will no longer solely be styling collections, but creating them. Not that this is anything new to him. Ib is a famously hands-on stylist, known to shape the direction of entire collections rather than merely offering interpretation and embellishment. “I think it’s already in my universe to make clothing,” Ib says. “I think the joy of what I have been doing as a stylist is to have long, long conversations about clothing with the designers I work with. We’re in those rooms for hours and we’re analysing things and shaping and trying lots of looks and building ideas together, and I’m always learning in that context. It’s a beautiful thing, to work in that way with other people, and I’m very happy that I have always worked in a way that allows me to get more involved in that side and give more than just, ‘Oh, I’m putting some clothes together.’”
It is 2pm and Ib Kamara is happy with how the imagery is shaping up on set with Rafael Pavarotti. “It’s always fun with Raf,” he says with a smile. Ib’s work balances on carefully aggregated scales of elegance, defiance and good humour. He writes most of his thoughts down before a shoot and playfully tests himself on set. “I don’t like to overcomplicate things,” he says. “There’s a lot of information in an image, but at least you will understand the main core of what I am trying to say. Even if you have to digest it later. Sometimes I am digesting it in the process of making it. I am also questioning it. I am fighting the work.”
His work is most notable for its ability to build complete worlds in a single picture. He is dyslexic, “so this is my language.” He shares some ideological and personal connections with British line-in-the-sand ’80s street-fashion movement Buffalo, but his work also feels like it is turning a new page in fashion. His work is narrative, sometimes obliquely, sometimes pointedly.
The cover image of Ib Kamara’s first issue of ‘Dazed’, from May 2021, was a Paolo Roversi shot of a young Black man in a Gucci tracksuit being administered the Coronavirus vaccine, a message he fretted about sending out at the time. “‘Dazed’ is so close to a lot of people’s hearts,” he notes. “It was the pressure of letting them down, not taking ‘Dazed’ into my time, to a place where it can say something. It’s such a sensitive time to make magazines, you know, and I’ve never wanted to offend anybody intentionally, but I still want to say something. Where do you find that balance?”
The story connected pertinent dots between wearable fashion, Ib’s own backstory as a prospective medical student and statistics on the take-up of the vaccine rollout by people of colour. “Also, there is such a responsibility with a magazine like ‘Dazed’,” he says. He is deeply respectful of the legacy of the publication he now leads and considered about where it goes from here. He says when he was first approached about the job, he was offered a completely free hand to do with the magazine as he chose. “I have to communicate a message,” he says. “A beautiful dress on the cover does not sell a magazine for me. It’s more about what it is all saying. What does it all mean?” As his opening shot as editor-in-chief, it landed with a smart, meaningful thud, capturing its exact moment in time. “Thank you so much,” he says when I tell him this. Whenever a compliment is offered, he receives it graciously. Ib’s manners are noticeably impeccable.
For all the sensational headway Ib Kamara has made, producing a succession of prodigiously bold, brilliant and multi-layered imagery that has quietly turned him into one of the most influential figures in global fashion, he rarely applies that lens to dressing himself. “I find it hard to dress in the morning. I am the worst stylist. ‘What am I wearing, Ibrahim?’” He says that when the staff of ‘Dazed’ turn up in a particularly considered look, he will make sure to compliment them. “I ask them how they put it together. I’m more interested in dressing other people. I love clothing. I love fashion. But I also love saying something.”
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Out of Saint Martins, Ib worked for three key figures who helped shape and define the transformative Buffalo aesthetic, a make-do-and-mend jumble sale of found paraphernalia, sportswear, experimental Japanese tailoring and London conceptualism, whose reverberations will throb across fashion indefinitely. He assisted Simon Foxton and Judy Blame, both of whom he refers to as “creative geniuses,” and then found his longest-standing mentor in Barry Kamen, the younger of the beautiful, self-effacing London siblings who formed an arresting two-man shopfront for Buffalo’s ideology. Barry, brother Nick and Judy Blame have all since passed. “I loved those people,” he says, “because they did exactly what they wanted to do. Every conversation I had with Barry was not about fashion. He mentored the hell out of me.”
It was Kamen who first told Ib he would one day be an editor. “It’s funny, the first job he took me to was in Germany, a commercial job. I sat around the table, watching, because I admired him so much. And he said to me, ‘I see you becoming an editor.’ At the time, I was really upset. I said, ‘I want to become a stylist. I want to become what you are. I want to be like you because you are my hero.’”
When he was offered the ‘Dazed’ job, Kamen’s words came back to him. “Damn, he predicted that.” Kamen gave him free access into his world. “I would literally do all my photoshoots at his studio because I had access to it. I was like his little son.” Ib repaid the investment with his time and energy. “I gave him everything I could because I really loved him. And whenever I did a photoshoot, he was the first to see it. He never had anything bad to say about it. I would say, ‘Barry, come on, I need criticism,’ and he would say, ‘No, it’s all good. You are doing your thing.’ That’s why I was so free when I started working, because this guy never really thought anything I ever did was wrong.”
Ib keeps a printout of the last email Barry sent to him before he died. “In that email he said, ‘You’re an outsider and you should always be that way, because there is nothing wrong with being an outsider.’ It was so inspiring to have met someone who really, really rocked my universe, who really taught me to love clothes in a different way. From the seams to the tailoring, he appreciated it all. The man would sit down and teach me about the seam of a jacket. Wow.”
Ib Kamara is not the type of stylist to sit down with and talk about incoming trends. He is not a natural consumer and says the thought of waking up on a Saturday morning and going to Bond Street is complete anathema to him. “No. I am definitely not that person.” Almost ten years into his professional styling career, he is just beginning to build an archive.
Yet he feels visually prophetic, in possession of a sixth sense for where we are headed. His confidence in the generation below his is contagious. “I don’t think of fashion as clothing; I think of it as a mentality. The more the mentality changes, the more you’re going to see the effect on menswear. I think menswear will change because Gen Z is way advanced. When I started, when I was young, there was a lot of information that I didn’t have access to. I see people younger than me and they have so much more information – about almost everything in the world.”
He’s constantly inspired by kids floating through the ‘Dazed’ offices. “I am fascinated by young people that are doing incredible things, and I think, because of their mentality, men’s style and fashion is going to drastically change. I think we’re about to see a burst of complete creative expression. The generation below me I think is quite radical and they ask a lot of the right questions.”
The day after we meet, Boris Johnson will stand down as British Prime Minister. “I cannot wait to see him slide out of Number 10 Downing Street,” Ib says. He still watches the news, alert for clues on how to change the transference of information about how the world is run to his taste. He has been following the soon-to-be former PM’s downfall closely. “That’s the thing with the generation below me. They are political. They question everything. They want to know why they are left with this mess. That is the question they want answered.”
Sometimes, Kamen would use Ib as his fit model when he was working for him. “Barry used to do a lot of fittings on me,” he recalls. “I was his model as well as his mentee in that office. And he always found a way to make me feel beautiful. I will take that away with me forever. There was this man that made me feel like I had a voice. I was seen. He saw me. That’s a beautiful thing. Now it’s my job to pass that on.”