Photography Sartorial Anarchy Untitled #4, Sartorial Anarchy Untitled #2 and Sartorial Anarchy Untitled #3. On view at the Stux Gallery
ARISE first admired Iké Udé’s supreme approach to dress and dandyism in 2009 (issue 6, My Style). The Lagos-born, New York-based artist, photographer and publisher had just brought out his book Style File: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed, in which he profiled suave, debonair and picturesque luminaries whose style passed his mustard. In the same year, Udé was selected as one of Vanity Fair’s International Best Dressed Originals, an accolade that his personal dedication to finely tuned regalia more than adequately deserved.
I’ve since contributed to his magazine aRUDE and he’s kindly obliged to write a foreword for my upcoming book New African Fashion. We’ve never met but I hope to right this wrong before the year is out.
In the meantime, I want to draw attention to his current exhibition Self: Photographic Portraits and Sartorial Anarchy at the Stefan Stux Gallery in New York, which opened this week. Udé is best known for his self-portraiture, most notably his Cover Girl series in which he transported his image onto lifestyle magazine covers such as Vogue, The Face and Harper’s Bazaar. This exhibition continues his oeuvre, which references classical portrait painting and employs costumes and props from different eras to explore his notion of “sartorial anarchy”. If you’re in Manhattan, make haste.
Udé has also recently launched style blog The Chic Index. “It’s an extension of my book and my continuing interest and passion in costumes, style as a mode of expression, biography and practice,” he says. My favourite recent post focuses on a spiffing bow tie-wearing gentleman called Raymond Childs, whose Achilles heel is vintage Yves Saint Laurent. When asked “What is your overall impression of how people dress in general?” Childs replied: “Too casual to the point of degradation.” Hear hear!
More on Iké Udé
Self: Photographic Portraits and Sartorial Anarchy is at Stefan Stux Gallery, 530 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001, until June 25
Helen Jennings | ARISE magazine, editor