Numéro France #239 [IG] June/July 2023, out May 31, is devoted to the protecting the global water supply, the sacred element at the origin and healthy sustenance of human, animals, plants, and other forms of life.

In a fashion story ‘Rivages’ [shorelines], Numéro uses visually-arresting imagery to explore the contradictions and tensions between higher-end clothes — often luxury fashion labels — and the contamination of our collective Mother Earth.

Models Eugenia Otoo, Victoria Asare Oppong & Abenlema Betty are styled by Edem Dossou [IG] wearing multiple designer names or runway recognizable designs, in beautiful but also probing and quietly disruptive images by Kenny Germé [IG]. It all depends on how deeply you want to dive, because this minute we have no text for the fashion story./ Beauty by Judah Odei

Collectively we demand hardships of people in our poorest countries from the African continent to Asian nations like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, so that we can consume. Seeing the use of tires in these images, I said “how clever . . . they are like sculptures . . . but they also confine.”

Then I remembered a story about the disease and chemicals-laden waterways across Africa, as countries ship their old tires to the continent and they collect water and breed mosquitos and disease. Burning old tires unleashes a torrent of dangerous chemicals.

With the increasing use among Africans of their own motor vehicles and a lack of adequate tire recycling facilities in Africa, it’s estimated that over 250,000,000 used tires are left to pile up in fields, roadsides, and garbage dumps across the continent. At least AOC is aware of all these contradictions.

This is the kind of fashion story that former EIC of Vogue Italia Franca Sozzani would commission. ‘Rivages’ is a less political statement than Meisel’s ‘Oil & Water’ but it probes the community of fashion consumers and the peoples and places making the clothes we consume.

Progressives or “woke” minds are typically processing all key messages being delivered by our creatives. In today’s Numéro France #239, Kenny Germé and Edem Dossou are definitely ones to watch. ~ Anne