Lola Loves Cargo

A recent, massive purge of my closet, drawers, storage bins and shoe bags has confirmed what I know to be true: I love fashion and I crave variety!  My cousin Laurie was my closet idol.  She was an only child and as the youngest of three, I aspired to have what I perceived to be an endless wardrobe.  Fashion is a way to dream, to imagine a life, a scene, a moment through the clothes you would choose to wear.  I truly embrace it as an art form and means of expression. Thus, when I met the designer, Lola Faturoti of Lola Loves Cargo, I couldn’t possibly imagine designing just one item: cargo pants. It was one of many questions I had when we sat down for an interview at Mondiale lifestyle, a neat home décor/accessories shop on the Lower East Side, owned by Gina Richer.

Given Lola’s natural flair for color and pattern, I sensed there was much more to her story, and I was right. Lola Loves Cargo is the latest incarnation of a woman who has spent much of her adult life as a designer. English born, Nigerian raised with a London College of Fashion diploma, she made her way to New York in the early 90’s to sell clothes at Charivari.  Deconstruction was hot, with exposed seams and pieced together fabrics.  Working around labels such as Dries Van Noten, Helmut Lang and Maison Margiela and with the encouragement and mentorship of Barbara Weiser, she went on to design her first line in 1993.  Multiple lines followed with time off in between and a stint in Milan before returning to New York, but she wanted more. Fashion with a purpose, a social conscience, as a means to help women.

When I asked why cargo pants, she explained “It’s an item of clothing normally used for fighting in the war. For us now, it represents us as women standing together, fighting together to empower, encourage and stand together in solidarity.  Also you can style it in any way you want to and still feel like yourself, without conforming to any fashion rules which are expected of you.  You know it was so funny, I was looking in my storage a while ago at the sketches I did for my first collection for Charivari and it was all camouflage.  More feminine with long skirts, tops, a coat from two coats sewn together.  So I guess the cargo thing has always been in me and I’ve come full circle on this journey.”

Lola credits her paternal Grandmother, who brought her up, as one of her main influences to make fashion her life’s work.  She was a dressmaker who designed traditional wraps by combining different panels of fabric together.  Lola used this technique and merged it with the modern deconstruction style when she first started designing.  Her Mom was another big influence.

“Every time she travelled the world she would bring me back something.  I remember from London in the 70’s she brought me platform shoes.  And now you could just imagine this girl in this rural village in Nigeria, wearing platform shoes and petal pushers, so I was always kind of really different.”

Embracing her cultural roots with her contemporary aesthetic didn’t come easily.  “I think I was running from myself back then(in fashion school), I didn’t know how important this traditional girl was inside of me, I wanted to be modern, to fit in, in London and I buried that side of me, trying to be cool.”

Lola incorporates indigenous designs on her pants from various cultures around the globe.  Her aim is to preserve this work for future generations and to provide viable income to the women and their communities that manufacture them.  She currently works with a fair trade company in rural Sri Lanka that supports their female workforce with education, health and safety practices. 

She hopes to travel the world to expose the different lifestyles and customs of indigenous people to the West and stresses its vital importance.

“We need to go back to ourselves, now we are just all the same, we’re all like dogs with no tails, running around, colorless, not knowing who we are.  And I think in order for us to really survive and not be like clones, we need to all kind of go back to that, to who we are, to what we are. We all have culture.  That is where humanity lies, that is where love lies.”