Fashion for Everyone
Advocate: Adebayo Oke-Lawal
The Full Story
Nigerian designer Adebayo Oke-Lawal is 28 and originally had a job working in finance, but decided to follow his passion for fashion. He created the brand Orange Culture in 2011 as an alternative to the typical masculine clothes and emphasizes the use of the color orange. Men’s fashion usually features red and blue colors, but the color orange provides a neutral color. He became involved in the movement because he was “motivated by stereotypes,”(Frearson 2019). He grew up going to an all-boys school and was bullied for not fitting into this traditional form of masculinity (Frearson 2019). Each of his collections explores a different problem such as privacy, individuality, and mainly stereotypes around racial identity.
Organization: MenEngage Africa
The Full Story
MenEngage Africa is an organization that is working to advance gender justice and advocate for human rights. Their main focus is on deconstructing the stereotypes of male gender roles and changing the social norms that shape their behavior. It does this in order to achieve gender equality and empower women. This was largely prompted by the UN sustainable development goals. They do their work through advocacy campaigns, conducting studies with men and boys, spreading information, promoting sexual and reproductive health and rights, hosting conferences, and seeking to strengthen involvement in political and social engagement on issues of gender justice. It mainly does this on a local and community level in order to create these new norms. Their most notable campaign was the UNiTe Campaign. This culminated with a climb of Mt Kilimanjaro which was a symbolic gesture of raising a voice to end violence against women. The climb is symbolic of the challenges faced to end-gender based violence. The ultimate goal is to create a favorable and supportive environment for governments to fulfill existing policy commitments.
Orange Culture
https://www.instagram.com/orangecultureng/?hl=en
Gender is defined through an inanimate object, clothing, throughout our social movement. It is being used in this case to deconstruct the ideas of what gender looks like. This social movement was created to deconstruct the concept that there is a gender binary and shifts it into one of gender-neutrality. It removes the stereotypes of what people "should" wear in order to change social norms. Gender is performative and Adebayo Oke-Lawal discusses how it is expressed through the colors red and blue. His work with Orange Culture attempts to challenge the way that gender is constantly being reproduced through clothing. The gendering of this non-human thing is used to express each individual's internal identity. Gender-neutral fashion allows people to break through this power structure and allows people to define themselves.
