YINKA ILORI’S WORLD OF COLOUR & OPTIMISM

Positivity radiates throughout everything Yinka Ilori does. His work is centred around unbridled optimism, flowing throughout different creative mediums with uplifting hues and mesmerising patterns. It’s a sensibility that’s rightly earned him the title of “ambassador of joy”, where the artist draws upon his British-Nigerian heritage to convey new, joyful narratives through contemporary design.

His creative approach is deep-rooted in community, with the aim of making art accessible to all, inviting people in to communicate with his work in a positive manner — be it architecture, furniture and now, through his partnership with The North Face, fashion. Celebrating the launch of Yinka Ilori’s NSE FW24 collection with the esteemed outerwear brand, SneakersbeShops caught up with the multi-disciplinary artist at SneakersbeShops London to discuss his creative outlook, his collection with The North Face and the importance of community.   

Your FW24 NSE collection is centred around reframing our perception of bad weather into all weather is good weather, something which I take as a metaphor for remaining positive even though times may seem difficult. Can you touch upon this and explain the meaning behind it?

For me, the phrase “bad weather” comes from experiencing joy and being outside whether it’s snowing or raining, so how do you reimagine bad weather through joy? As a young kid in London growing up in Islington, we were always outside, whether it was snowing or raining, but the weather never became a deterrent for us to celebrate joy or make joy within our community. It’s kind of just creating a bit of humour surrounding the phrase “bad weather” and turning it into something positive.

Community is integral to your work, where you use your creativity to bring people together and engage with your art in a positive way. Why is giving back so important to you, and how did this approach drive your work with The North Face?

For me, giving back is a crucial part of my practice. My work is centred around communities, families and building new forms of storytelling. As part of our project, we’re donating some money to two charities, one in North London called Rose Bell, and we’re creating artist edition prints with Christopher Roberts gallery in West London, with some of the money raised from the prints will go to a community centre in North London. We host workshops and talks for young artists and designers to try and give them knowledge, as I try to invest my time and energy into the future artists and architects of tomorrow. So yeah, giving back is a huge part of my practice.  

You use many different mediums to convey your narratives of positivity and optimism. What is it about working with The North Face and using outerwear as a vehicle for this that excites you?

For me, The North Face are storytellers, and I’m a storyteller. The North Face are a brand who really care about community and creating memories, and they’re two things that really resonate with me. For me, it was such a natural collaboration — very organic — which is my favourite sort of fashion collaboration. The North Face was the right fit for me to tell the story of dreaming, community and the power of community in fashion.

Collaboration plays a massive part in your creative output. Why is collaboration important to you and what do you look for in collaborative partners?

Collaborations are super important to me. I’ve worked with a number of different brands in the past before across architecture, products and automotive, so different disciplines and different worlds. The North Face have worked with lots of artists and done different brand collaborations, but with this one in particular, what I loved about The North Face is they made me believe I could dream even bigger. With this collection, we were able to express different colours, pattern and stories through fashion. That’s what I look for: a collaborator that lets me be free, doesn’t control the narrative and lets me be myself.

Touching upon the collection and the garments themselves, can you talk us through some of the patterns you’ve used and what the inspiration behind them is?

Yeah, I’m wearing the Rainshell jacket from the collection right now which is probably my favourite. You can see it has a flower motif — I call it melodious flower, which is inspired by an act of kindness, you know, when you give someone a flower, it’s a sign of love, affection and joy. So it’s about giving people their flowers through the collection. This is probably my favourite piece as it’s about showing someone love and giving something back to someone you do or don’t know.