Due to incarceration last year due to the pandemic and with little or no work in fashion, fashion photographer Ronan Mckenzie left photography and turned to fashion design.
“We have a sewing machine at home and my partner was going to make something, so I joined the dance and really enjoyed the process,” she said, speaking to AnOther.
She started sharing her creations on Instagram, and thus the Selasi brand was born – in the Ghanaian Ewe language it means “God hears me”.
Almost a year after her first post, Mckenzie presented her first official collection, collaborating with Wesley Harriott, Marko Baković (footwear designer) and Khanh Brice Nguyen (knitwear wizard).
“To be honest, Selasi is absolutely selfish. I can do whatever I want and only my opinion counts” stated.
Working with stretch jersey, stiff linen and vegan leather, she chooses a limited colour palette: sometimes white, but mostly shades of brown.
“I knew I wanted to do brown garments because they’re hard to find, especially the deeper, darker browns, so I wanted to find fabrics that were close to my skin tone,” she confessed. He also presented isothermal knitwear – in collaboration with KBN Knitwear – with creases in some areas that allude to the cheloidal scarring caused by melanin on darker skins.
For the collection shoot, Mckenzie gave up her usual position behind the camera and teamed up with her colleague Nadine Ijiwere.
“I wanted to open up the conversation and see how other Black women think about clothes and how they see them,” she explained according to AP.
