Mowalola’s DIRTY POP show, presented as part of her SS25 collection during Paris Fashion Week, was a highly anticipated return to runway for Mowalola and it sparked wide conversations in the fashion world. The show was characterized by bold silhouettes, provocative imagery and emotionally fueled themes and concepts. The show conceptualized Mowalola as an artist as she combined fashion, performance art and music for a unique showcase.

What struck me the most about the show is how mowalola explored the global black identity and the challenges it currently faces. This was communicated through different pieces throughout the show but one particularly stood out to the internet which was the Infamous “N*GGA”shirt.

At first glance, the shirt was a simple flannel with “N*GGA” printed across it in the iconic font and style of Ebony magazine the same graphic seen on Dean Blunt’s Black is Beautiful album cover. According to Mowalola on X, the Dean Blunt album was her primary reference. Yet the decision to use Ebony’s logo style stirred controversy. Ebony, founded in 1945, has long documented Black news, culture, and entertainment. For many, it is a cultural institution. Many argued that placing such a historically charged word in its style felt almost sacrilegious, given Ebony’s role in Black media history.

The N*gga brought up a long debated topic within the global black community of who can say the N-word. African American users online expressed that Mowalola, because of her Nigerian/British background should not have made use of the N-word on a shirt. This opinion has a lot of history behind it as there has been a long debate of whether black people in the diaspora and not of American descent can say the N-word, this includes Africans, Europeans, South Americans etc. in the US and the African diaspora, the N-word was typically used as a tool of dehumanization towards black people, especially the N-word with the “-er“. Over time, African Americans reappropriated the “-a” version as a term of familiarity or solidarity within their community. African Americans feel the right to use the reclaimed version belongs only to those of African American descent, their argument being that the shared experiences tied to racism is a distinct criteria for the use of the word.  Africans and other diasporic groups also make use of the word but African Americans question thier use of the word on the grounds that the African diasporic communities do not fully understand the history and trauma that comes with the word. The African diasporic communities argue that their shared blackness allows them to make use of the word.

How this relates to the N-word shirt is while African Americans have reclaimed the N-word and infused it in their expression in different mediums such as music and art, when someone outside that cultural context uses it even if black especially in a commercial sense, it can be seen as such person profiting off the trauma of black people. There is also a feeling that the diasporic communities do not share the same generational trauma and therefore their usage of the word can be trivial in a sense.

Mowalola’s use of the word on a shirt in a runway context made it seem like black American history was being commodified. From the Diasporic black communities perspective, they believe that skin color is enough of a pass to use the N-word but the opposing argument to this is while blackness is global, the N-word is historical and local as the history of the N-word is rooted in a localized context specific to the US.  When such a word is used in an artistic sense, even if the creator had a good intention behind it, its impact can still be felt in different ways opposed to the intention of the artist.

Mowalola’s work is all about exploring black identity in broader perspectives such as sexuality and non conformity. She defended the shirt and argued that since the N-word is used in different mediums such as Music, Television etc so why is her use of the word in fashion being treated as a taboo. Her position questions the selective acceptance of expression within the black community and shows that in terms of unity in the global black community, there is still a long way to go as there is too much focus on the differences and diversity within the community and not a lot of focus on the shared black identity.

The N*gga shirt while very controversial opened up conversations worth having. Despite the reception, Dirty Pop was successful in creating dialogue. Mowalola’s work has never sought universal approval instead, it seeks to disrupt, unsettle, and provoke reflection. In an industry often driven by commercial marketability and aesthetic safety, Dirty Pop was a refusal to conform, a daring and unapologetically Black vision of what fashion can be when it’s scope is not narrowed.