Fashion designer name

Lola Faturoti - African American fashion designer

While many of New York's A-list designers showed their fall collections at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan last April, Lola Faturoti, Seventh Avenue's newest designing sister, opted to unveil hers downtown. Poetic yet practical, Faturoti's Africanmeets-Victorian floor-length creations--in tree-bark taupes and muddy-river browns--were right at home at the Museum for African Art gallery on lower Broadway.

"I took nineteenth-century fashion and made it funky," the 28-year-old designer says, describing her fall inspirations. What you won't see in Faturoti's collection, however, is pants. "I only design clothes that I wear, and I don't ever wear pants."

With only two fashion shows under her belt, the Nigerianraised designer has nonetheless garnered more favorable nods from fashion critics than any other new designer this season. How'd she do it? Coming to America four years ago, Faturoti landed a job as a sales associate at the trendy New York boutique, Charivari. By the summer of 1992, she was wearing some of her own chiffon creations to work. Given so much "sheer" talent, it was no surprise that customers were soon asking Faturoti if her pieces were available on the store's racks. Pretty soon Charivari's co-owner and vice-president, Barbara Weiser, popped the same question and helped the diligent designer stage her first fashion show at the Holly Solomon Gallery in SoHo last spring.

Following the show, orders totaling about $60,000 came in from Henri Bendel in Chicago and Fred Segal in Los Angeles as well as from Charivari. After her fall showing, Faturoti added more stores to her growing roster: If and Intermix in New York and Ron Herman/Fred Segal Melrose, Ron Ross and Salon de The in California. Like most young designers without backers, Faturoti is currently working on a shoestring budget--which means she can't hop on a plane to visit Lagos, Nigeria, where her mom, who is a dressmaker, still lives. "I'm so happy that my mom is coming next spring," claims the homesick designer. "She hates the weather here in winter, you know."

The cool climate aside, Faturoti says she loves her new home. "Something told me not to stay in London. There are so many designers there, and I felt I would get lost in the shuffle. Now I know it was my destiny to come to New York. I want to make my mark in America." (For more information on Lola Faturoti's collection, contact In the Mix in New York at [212] 343-0808.)

EMMA AMOS: 'PAINTING WHITE'

Visual artist Emma Amos has always defied expectations. She grew up in Atlanta, and by the time she was 11 she was outshining her college-age colleagues in her oil-painting class at Morris Brown College. In the mid-1960's, after studying art in London and attending graduate school, she became the youngest and only female member of the elite Spiral group, the short-lived artists' circle including such esteemed masters as Romare Bearden, Hale Woodruff and Norman Lewis.

At present a full-time fine-arts professor at New Jersey's Rutgers University, Amos still hasn't learned to stay in her place. Her current traveling exhibition, titled Changing the Subject, challenges the notion, embraced by many White curators and dealers, that African-American figurative artists ought to restrict themselves to painting Black subjects only. By incorporating laser-print photos of the Ku Klux Klan and White figures onto oversize canvases, she is, in effect, "painting White."

Her point is that White male artists, as far back as Gauguin and Picasso, are often lauded when they explore the "exotic" imagery of people of color, while Black artists are expected to keep their subject matter Black. Her boldness hasn't exactly gotten her blackballed. This past spring Changing the Subject opened at the Art in General Gallery in New York City's SoHo and is scheduled to be mounted at New Jersey's Montclair Art Museum at the end of the year. Since last year another ten-year retrospective has traveled to Atlanta and will be in Ohio in October. Come January Emma Amos is finally getting a one-woman show at The Studio Museum in Harlem.

This self-described "bad" artist explores themes of racism, sexism and the collapse of Western civilization, not the sort of "lite" stuff that is intended to hang quietly over the living-room sofa. "I'm a smart lady," she says with self-assurance. "I want my work to be as provocative as the work of bell hooks, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison."

YOUSSOU N'DOUR: SOUND OF SENEGAL

He has been described by critics as a bona-fide star of "world-pop fusion." Senegalese singer-songwriter Youssou N'Dour--who sings in Wolof (his native tongue) and in French and English--admits with a smile that he's grateful for the praise but questions the concept of "world music." Why? "That term was created to put all the Third World music in one box!"

With his cascading falsetto riffs, entrancing melodies and free-spirited stage presence and the intoxicating polyrhythms of his band, The Super Etoile, N'Dour claims he isn't trying to fuse anything. His artistic mission can better be understood by the title of his new album, The Guide, which features collaborations with singer-songwriter Neneh Cherry and saxophonist Branford Marsalis. "What I'm really trying to do is lead listeners to a different sound," he says, "but I feel that I'm capable of writing something that the whole world can relate to."

With his catalog of around 20 albums and his constant tour dates--which have included the Amnesty International "Human Rights Now!" tour where he was a coheadliner alongside Tracy Chapman, Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Peter Gabriel--N'Dour has developed a worldwide cult following over the last eight years that transcends any language barrier. "I feel that my message comes through the rhythms," he explains as he sits in the living room of his modest home in Dakar. "People can still get a feel for my ideas and emotions without knowing the words."

Although his career has taken him across oceans (at the moment he's trying to schedule a last-minute request to perform in the newly free South Africa), the globe-trotting griot, who was recently made an ambassador for UNICEF in conjunction with The Year of the Child, claims he has no intention of relocating from his birthplace. Nor does N'Dour, who released his debut album in Dakar at the age of 13, intend to filter his message of Senegalese self-determination.

"My new album is geared to giving hope to the youths of my country," says N'Dour, whose first name means prophet in Wolof and who is regarded by many as the Bob Marley of Senegal. "There is a lot of joblessness here," he continues. "Many kids here have dreams, but the opportunities are limited. Our music is finally emerging and I hope our other talents will soon be recognized. I will always be involved in my country, for Senegal is my source of inspiration."