Backstage, as people filtered out of Kampala Serena’s Victoria Hall after his “Futuristic Past” fashion show, Xenson was too exhausted to talk. It is where he had been for the entire duration of the show, fitting over 51 models.
These included professional models, as well as all the acts brought on to entertain at the event; two break dancers, a contemporary dance troupe, a Senegalese percussion drum ensemble, a group of skaters, three performance poets, former Miss Uganda, Maria Namiro and Judith Heard.
When he finally emerged, it was to recite a Luganda poem and thank the show’s sponsors. No lengthy speech, not that there was need to give one. Everything that needed to be said had been spelt out by the eclectic influences of his uber-cool clothes, the designers he had selected to accompany him and the entertainers.
All designers aspire to be different, to create a style that is unique to them; in business it’s called branding. But Xenson goes to extraordinary lengths. This is not intentional, though. He just happens to have interest in a lot of things and is not afraid to undertake them. And the results, judging by his phenomenal growth and awards, are always very good.
In a 2010 interview with the Bayimba Festival blog, Xenson said he’s “not a painter. I am not a music artist. I am not a fashion designer. I am not an installation artist. I am, actually, not an artist at all.”
He is all those things. He paints, raps, sprays walls with graffiti and designs clothes. He is also a poet, one who prefers to write in his native Luganda.
This diversity, or restlessness if you prefer, could easily be used to diagnose Xenson as a Jack of all trades, one who ends up so stretched that he never excels at any. But deriving such conclusions skirts his passionate dedication to art. After all, he quit an engineering degree and decided to study Fine Art instead, earning a first class degree.
It was a brilliant decision because, since then, he has accumulated an esteemed collection of films, paintings and cloth designs. Xenson says he writes poetry in Luganda because he wants to stay true to his roots. This desire of cultural authenticity, was also evident in some of the items at the show. There were handbags made from barkcloth as well as banana fibres.
Xenson said Futuristic Past, “Is a retrospective look of where we are coming from, where we are and where we are headed as humans.” His work at the exhibition, was structured to represent three eras; the past, the present and the future or, to fit it in the shows narrative, the futuristic past.
The past consisted exclusively of clothes made from brown barkcloth, adorned with mats, reeds and sisal ropes. The present, meanwhile, reflected his hip-hop influences, with the models dressed wholly in denim, or complementing denim with kitenge attires. When it came to the future however, his choices were theoretical, underlining his eccentricity; white backcloth adapted to modern styles, scarves made from mats.
As an eco-friendly designer, this show continued a line of green events he has held in the recent past. It explains the richness of organic materials, mats, reeds and tree branches mainly used to accessorise the clothes, as well as his futuristic past where backcloth, hopefully, will be resurrected to regain its once prominent feature in African fashion. The show was sponsored by Redd’s and the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development.