Wednesday 10 March 2010

March Press Release

Our March press release is now available! It has some information about the inspiration behind our Autumn/Winter collection: Frozen Inferno

We've had a few requests from stylists and a UK magazine to use our clothes for upcoming photo shoots. This is very exciting for us and I don't want to jinx it by saying too much so I'm going to stop talking typing now and just wait until I have some pictures to show you.

Have a blessed week!

Renaissance of Our Roots - March2010 Press Release

Tuesday 2 March 2010

The making of... RooR 'Frozen Inferno' (Part 2)

So the clothes were all in some stage of preparation and we started to think about the other details for the show: jewellery being one of the important aspects. We had thought about making the jewellery ourselves, we had some of the materials and we knew what we wanted it to look like. However we had to finally admit to ourselves that there was no way we could have done it all ourselves.

Through a mighty struck of luck (actually scratch that, more of God's perfect timing) I met someone at church who makes jewellery, Mimmie, and she took on the challenge of making a range exclusively for RooR. Mimmie and I took a trip down to Portobello Market to find some special beads and materials for the show. We found so many great stuff (and some pieces for myself too...don't judge me) and then Mimmie started her amazing creations. Because the feel of the show was Ice Queen we chose mainly glass beads and crystal in clear, pinks and blues.

We also started to talk music for the show. We knew we wanted an old school African sound and went through scores of Fela Ransome Kuti's old albums (courtesy of dad and one of our Uncle's music collection) and came across 'Waka Waka' and decided it was exactly what we were looking for.

We're still waiting for the official pictures and video from the show producer and will be updating our website RooR Design once we get them. In the meantime here are some of our shots from the show:

RooR AW2010 show (2)

RooR AW2010 show (4)

FrozenInferno (1)

FrozenInferno (9)

FrozenInferno (8)

FrozenInferno (12)

RooR AW2010 show (6)

FrozenInferno (7)

RooR AW2010 show (8)

RooR AW2010 show (1)

RooR AW2010 show (7)

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photo-2

photo-4

photo-5

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Catwalk Professor - Mr Fierce, runway coach diva extraordinaire

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Thursday 25 February 2010

The making of... RooR 'Frozen Inferno' (Part 1)

Hi lovely people. This post is long overdue but after a few consecutive days of little or no sleep before the show we all pretty much conked out on Saturday night. I remember my mum (who was out of the country in Nigeria at the time of the show) text me after the show and asked what our choice of bubbly was, little did she know we were counting down the seconds till our heads hit our pillows. The rest of the week was London Fashion Week and the girls and I were out and about at shows et al. But fashion week is over and we return to our regular scheduled broadcast.

I have pictures! Not the actual photos, not yet, but I have pictures from 'Frozen Inferno...The Making Of' to give you an insight into the making of the clothes, from the sketches, the fabrics used and the final pieces. All the pictures are on my Flickr account but I have chosen some of my favourite ones to blog about:

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Pieces for the silver flip skirt. Each panel is made from two layers of Gele (Nigerian material traditionally used for head ties) and one piece of lace that has a similar flower pattern. We wanted the panels to be plain on one side with the lace giving the panels a 3D look on the other side.

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The skirt starting to come together; with the 3D side

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...and the 2D side

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This was the first draft so to speak of the silver flip skirt but we weren't happy with the large gaps in between. So we took it apart, made the gaps half the width and doubled the number of 'flips' we had to 24.

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Pink/silver gele head tie used for the 'ice cube' dress and tulip skirt

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The traditional way to wear gele (well it's usually tied to look a bit prettier than that)

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The 'Ice Cube' dress coming together

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Lace used for the 'Wedding dress'. We fell in love with this the minute we saw it, it's sheer and has sequinned details as well as the silver leather details that we thought were gorgeous!!

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The other lace we bought is pretty gorgeous as well (we struggled to pick our favourite out of the two). It looks like grey suede flowers interconnected with tiny tiny silvery grey 'stems' and 'leaves'

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Black/Blue flip skirt, made in the same way as the silver flip skirt except here the blue side is Gele and the black side Aso-oke

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The makings of the lace turtle-neck dress

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Make up options for the show ; the look for the show was Ice Queen to go with our African ice age concept and we wanted a smoky eye but using blues and silvers for a cool frosty look. We tried the pink but didnt really like it so decided it would be just the blue with the strong brows and nude lips. We were also starting to think of what jewellery we would use and thought big crystal/glass looking pieces would really complement the outfits. Now all we needed was some big crystal looking pieces...

That's the end of part 1, next we discuss music choices, shopping for jewellery and final details.

Friday 19 February 2010

London Fashion Week - RooR Exhibition

Today was the start of London Fashion Week in the capital and also our exhibition at Fashion Mavericks. For those of you who missed it (what could else could you have possibly had to do eh? *hee hee*) here are some pictures of our display and a special guest who came to see us

RooR exhibition (2)

RooR exhibition (5)

RooR exhibition (6)


RooR exhibition (7)
Us with Nike, Creative Director of Nike Akinola

Monday 8 February 2010

Invitation to RooR A/W 10/11 show


You are cordially invited to
Renaissance of our Roots
Frozen Inferno
Runway Show
and Exhibition
During London Fashion Week at Fashion Mavericks
February 19th 2010 – Exhibition 1pm-8pm | February 20th 2010 – Catwalk show 4:30pm
The Strand Palace Hotel
372 Strand, London
WC2R 0JJ | Map
For additional press/media inquiries about Renaissance of our Roots, please email ekaete.inyang@roordesign.com
For more information about the hosts of the show please email info@sunshine-grace.com


Renaissance of Our Roots - Press Release

Sunday 7 February 2010

RooR Spring/Summer 2009

Our first professional photo shoot for RooR! You can tell the difference too, it's not just us girls mucking about at home with our SLR and Photoshop. Here are some behind the scenes snaps shots:

BTS at RooR shoot (2)

BTS at RooR shoot (7)

BTS at RooR shoot (8)

BTS at RooR shoot (4)

BTS at RooR shoot (6)

BTS at RooR shoot (9)

BTS at RooR shoot (1)

Thanks to all for a great day - our first professional photo shoot was amazing! For a video montage with more pictures check out this YouTube link.

Clothing - Renaissance of our Roots
Photographer - Kitty Gallannaugh
Photographer's assistant - Nathan
Hair and Makeup Artist - Andie Okon
Model - Tope, from Mahogany Model Management
Stylists: Ekaete Inyang and Rotimi Ladeinde

Wednesday 19 August 2009

It's as easy as hitting 'Reply'...


It's been a loooonnnnggg week (does anyone remember Lil Miss Jocelyn? - random side-bar). We met with a website developer to set-up our RooR page and apparently it would cost £400 for about 10-pages and a bit of flash. That's about....£400 more than we're willing to spend on our website. Ok. I'll be fair. About £360 more than we wanted to spend. :)

So now we're on the look out for a cheap (or free, we're really not picky) web developer. Anyone out there? *knock knock*

Some more bad news - the venue we were really hoping to get turned us down - sth about the venue not being able to 'accomodate our event'. What does that even mean? So now we're looking for some more venue prospects with one possibility in Shepherd's Bush, fingers crossed.

And more bad news - yes this has been quite the week - the fashion show that we were supposed to be featuring in tonight (right this second in fact) that Phloh magazine was organising didn't go through in the end. And we found out that grown-ass men frequently still behave like 12-year olds. We knew I suppose but I'm a believer of second chances. Even after being 3 hours late to a meeting, moving it a different part of London and then bringing a child I held on the that faith (E had her doubts about him at this point, I should have listened to her).

The show still went on don't get me wrong, but RooR was not a part of it. And it wasn't a big deal that they couldn't use our clothes (ok, it was kind of a big deal as we did work really hard on our mini-collection and turned down some clients to allow us time to work on the clothes). We would have just appreciated a phone call/text/facebook message/BBM/email/Twitter DM to let us know. Honestly there's such a HUGE range of communication available....

And to top it off, after me practically stalking the guy to get some response from him I finally get through to his number and he plays the "hello....huh....i can't hear you...." card and hangs up. I was absolutely stupified! It was like I was back in primary 5, except my class was full of 20-something year-old idiots. It made me sooo mad. E actually reckons he's kinda cool for even having the balls to try that. I'm not sure I agree.

Anyway we do have one bit of good news. E got stopped in the streets the other day by headhunters for a model agency and they called her to come in for a photo-shoot tomorrow. If she gets booked (and of course she will) she'll get paid good money and get to keep the clothes after the shoot. And she had to think about it. *hiss* nonsense girl

RooR and The September Issue (NYC Premiere tonight)