Osman Yousefzada Is Resetting His Business With His “Last Yards” Collection

A predominantly digital London Fashion Week format didn’t faze Osman Yousefzada. The multidisciplinary designer has been focusing on film in recent seasons having taken a break from releasing collections; in June, for instance, he produced “Her Dreams Are Bigger” a four-minute depiction of garment workers in Bangladesh asked to imagine who will be wearing the clothes they are making in the factories (they envision that they are worn by blond, blue-eyed women).

For SS21 he has reverted back to his full name for his 50-piece capsule collection (he has parted ways with his previous investors) and released a film titled “Here to Stay”, a reference to the phrase his uncle and cousins used on the streets of Balsall Health, the working-class, inner-city area of Birmingham to which many from his Afghan-Pakistani community emigrated in the 1960s. It sums up the defiance of an immigrant group invited to the UK to work as cheap labour in the foundries, who were then faced with racist abuse and police brutality as well as economic hardship when those factories subsequently closed.

Osman co-wrote a poem for the film with Makayla Forde, an artist and academic currently working on a PhD on Black women’s health. “I grew up with [the message] ‘here to stay, here to fight’,” says Osman, speaking in a preview with British Vogue at the Mandrake hotel in Marylebone. “My family were activists in that sense.” His film is a moving musing on the politics of slavery existing as undercurrents to capitalist business models, an issue that has been occupying Osman in recent months as he watched his Birmingham community fall prey to coronavirus. “Fundamentally I don’t want to do business the way I have been doing it. The market is set up for profit, it’s not really inclusive,” he says. “I have tried to have investors, but it hasn’t given me sustenance.” Instead, he is looking to the ancient trading route, the Silk Route, for inspiration, “where everyone actually gains wealth.”

His collection comprises an edit of the well-tailored pieces he is best known for, predominantly made from deadstock fabrics – though the designer has christened them “last yards”, which certainly sounds more appealing. “It’s all pre-existing fabric that I’ve found, so there are limited-edition pieces of only 20 to 30 pieces depending on how much fabric I find” – he gestures behind him at some dramatic ruffled party dress creations – “and then others where I have partnered with small artisanal operations.”

Block print poplin fabric has been dyed using vegetables dyes in Multan, in Pakistan, and made into easy shirtdresses, while other fabrics dyed with beetroot and okra dyes in India have been used to create pyjama sets. Equally eye-catching were Nehru-collar suits in muted mushroom and classic black, worn in the lookbook with traditional Afghan wedding jewellery. The only drawback? “It’s difficult to build what fabrics you find into a cohesive story. Please don’t critique me on that!” he laughs. “It’s a different way of building a collection.”