Sarah Nsikak

I came to New York after studying art therapy in grad school. I didn’t have any fashion experience, but I wanted to work in fashion and focus on sustainability. My first internship was with a company that supported African artists and was Black-owned. But the way I was treated, it was probably the worst experience I’ve had in New York. I felt like I was constantly being gaslit. People would say, “Well, maybe this isn’t for you, maybe you’re not tough enough.” There were a lot of traditional fashion culture standards that they were trying to meet because they had won some awards, and I think they wanted to come off as like, Oh, we’re big dogs. They felt that they needed to appear a certain way.

So that was my first experience, and it taught me that no one has it all right, no one’s that cool. I had to take everyone off of the pedestals I had put them on and get back to the reason I was doing this in the first place. Afterwards, I worked at Caron Callahan and Mara Hoffman. I’m really grateful for those experiences, and I continued working in fashion up until the pandemic, really.

It probably seems like I’m still in fashion to some people because I’m making these dresses, but really they feel more like art pieces to me. At this point, I’ve already made over 100! Pretty insane. I’m just working all the time—I’ve never been busier. 

I design every single one of them, and it takes a long time to make each one. It’s just been a really great, humbling process for me to try to learn how to meet expectations in a way that’s ethical and sustainable. The messages I get feel really good. People are like, “Oh, this is exactly what I wanted,” or, “This feels like it was made for me.” I love the idea of someone feeling like they were heard and that their dress reflects them as a person. That’s special. 

I’m just hoping that it will be a timeless thing that people pull out for years and years to come. And at the same time, I’m also thinking about ways to share stories from Africa and how I can best do that without making it seem like I know everything. I mean, I’m definitely learning a lot as someone from Oklahoma who was raised in a very Western society that doesn’t teach about Africa. It’s been amazing talking about the Namibian women on my platform and sharing the random little stories that I hear. I think that’s one of the big reasons I started this project in the first place. 

I have a lot of different references for my work, all African. Right now, I’m really inspired by photographers and filmmakers. People like Malick Sidibé. He was a photographer in Mali who shot a lot in the 1960s when Mali first gained its independence. He was photographing Africans in this celebratory state—the same kind of energy I felt in New York when we found out that Trump wasn’t going to be president for another four years. His work is very carefree, very unapologetically African. It’s very tangible. He captured a lot of streetwear and fashion, which actually inspired some of the styles I’m making now.

Another example is Ousmane Sembène. He created a lot of films that I can very much relate to, even though they’re decades old. He made the film Black Girl, about a Senegalese woman who is sent to France to be a nanny but ends up being treated like garbage. When I first watched it, it was one of those full circle moments, because I was able to fully connect with my African heritage in a different way. Even though I grew up here, we have these experiences of sameness, of Black experience in the diaspora. I could relate to how she was treated in France in the film because of how I’m treated as a Black American woman in this predominantly white space. So there’s a lot of parallels there with my work—trying to reunite with my African heritage, what was always there, while still keeping and honoring where I currently am. We can fully acknowledge these parts of ourselves, and celebrate and pay tribute to all of them.

There are also things about myself that are new to me because of La Réunion but, at the same time, I think I have always known. Like how I love warmth; that’s such an African thing, you know, wearing a blanket when it’s hot outside and loving the sun. Small things. Reconnecting with this project has been like a bridge to my Nigerian heritage. It has shown me that this is kind of what I was meant to be doing all along.

It also makes me feel like I finally have a foot to stand on when it comes to talking about what’s happening in Lagos, what’s happening with SARS and police brutality in Nigeria—and in the U.S. So I have these two different perspectives of police brutality and violence against Black people. It is exhausting, but it’s also really important to see these parallels happening and to know that my Blackness in America can be so connected to my Blackness in Nigeria, and that my experience here can be so directly correlated to their experiences there. It’s been really eye-opening. 

If you’re a Black artist, you don’t really have an option about whether or not your art is political. It’s a privilege to be like, Oh yeah, this is not about anything; it’s just art for the sake of art. I wish I could do that. But if you’re any kind of minority, I feel like your work or your art is expected to have some kind of connection or attachment to what you’ve gone through and your experiences as a human. I just don’t know how I could not have some political side of my work. Even just saying that this is a sustainable art practice is a political statement. Some people don’t get that. I believe it’s really irresponsible to make stuff that’s brand new, but I also know it’s such a privilege to invest in something like this. I don’t expect everyone to spend $435 on a dress. It’s not a necessity, and I never want to come off as an elitist who says you have to shop sustainably when that’s not always an option. 

At the end of the day, La Réunion is really for anyone who wants to participate in revisiting themselves in the most authentic way possible. I hope that people can look at these themes and feel inspired to try to do that for themselves outside of this project.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Sarah Nsikak photographed by Stephanie Mei-Ling in Brooklyn. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter here.