On Saturday, September 16th, Mowalola Ogunlesi’s Spring/Summer 2024 runway presentation at London Fashion Week commenced. The collection was seemingly the usual micro-mini skirts and graphics that Mowalola is known for and quickly took a turn. Models walked out with bruises on their faces, as the designer’s collection was inspired by her first look at the film “Crash” by David Cronenberg. The collection featured 47 looks and was made up cracked leather pieces, extra high thigh highs, items with cutouts that flashed bum cracks, and standout separates with graphic anime images of naked women. The range was true to Ogunlesi and probably would have received approval from fashion insiders and her cult following like her previous runway seasons if she did not include a design with the Saudi Arabian flag on a miniskirt. That was the main criticism that the British designer had received. She is also facing backlash about her two-headed shirt designs, some feel the design is fatphobic.
Two models walked down the runway in the two-headed top with the print “4 slim people.” The designer said on X formerly known as Twitter that she “flipped” the design from Karl Lagerfeld’s “4 slim people” tank top from a Chanel runway in 2004. She wrote, “Ur [sic] rage is valid, but I will always be humorous.” The designer also pointed out how Chanel has yet to use a plus-sized model on their runways and noted that she “never sees any rage towards them.”
While that controversy seemed to subside, the designer found herself in the hot seat when it came to the Saudi Arabian flag mini skirt. There were a few other miniskirts going down the runway with flags printed on them like Japan and the U.K. but Saudi Arabia’s flag has sacred symbols of the Islamic Shahada on them that mean, “There is no god but God; Muhammad is the prophet of God.” According to WIRED Middle East, businesses and individuals are “banned from using the flag in commercial promotions including publications, goods and products, brochures and special gifts.” The use of the flag on a skirt is considered blasphemous. Ogunlesi’s initial response to thousands of comments asking her to respect the flag and apologize, with a post on X saying “a mini skirt being an act of war in 2023 is so dystopian.” This response to the design has been deleted from her account.
Since deleting those posts, Ogunlesi has once again posted on X, this time to apologize for the “hurt or offense” that she’d caused. The designer said that a “key inspiration” for her collection was different countries’ flags and that the use of Saudi Arabia’s flag was an “oversight.”
“One of my key inspirations for SS24 was to use the national flags of different countries,” she shared in a statement. “After the show, I found that one of these flags — Saudi Arabia — features sacred words, and its use has caused great offense. Now that I’ve been educated on this topic, I sincerely apologize for this.”
She added, “I’ll ensure this design is removed from the collection. I deeply regret any hurt or offense my oversight may have caused. Thank you for holding me accountable, and I appreciate your understanding as I learn from this experience.”