Mustafa Ahmed Writes on 'Black Love' for Valentino

Visit Complex to read Aria Hughes's interview with Mustafa Ahmed, who collaborated with Drake and now is participating in legendary couture designer Valentino's new poetry-inspired collection. "While many luxury brands have attached themselves to activism, streetwear and 'cool things' in ways that don’t always feel believable," Hughes explains, "Pierpaolo Piccioli, the creative director of Valentino, has made the collection feel relevant in meaningful ways—whether that's co-designing pieces for the men's fall 2019 collection with Undercover’s Jun Takahashi or featuring 43 black models in the spring/summer 2019 women's couture collection." Picking up from there: 

As recently as a year ago, Mustafa Ahmed, a 23-year-old poet, singer, and songwriter from Toronto who has worked with artists including Drake, the Weeknd, Daniel Caesar and Camila Cabello, didn't know what Valentino was. But after receiving a DM from the Maison Valentino Instagram account, which he initially ignored, he learned about the significance of the luxury house from his model friends.

From there, Ahmed, who goes by Mustafa the Poet, started a relationship with the brand, which began with a video collaboration for the men's fall 2019 show, then attending the women's couture show, and finally collaborating directly with Piccioli on the women's fall 2019 collection. Ahmed's poetry was embroidered on 25 pieces in the collection.

This is a new world for Ahmed, who began performing spoken word as a child before starting the Halal Gang, a collective of artists from Toronto made up of Ahmed, Puffy L’z, Mo-G, Safe, and Smoke Dawg, who was murdered last year. Here, Ahmed talks about what it was like working with a luxury brand, how he transitioned from poet to songwriter to singer, and the documentary about Toronto he's working on with Drake.

What was the process of working with Piccioli?
We started by talking about our shared interest in romantic poetry. I didn't even know at the time what the womenswear collection was going to be, but through our conversations, he developed three different mood boards around three of my poems. Then he wanted to have more of a conversation about what a collection would look like and the imagery he wanted to use. From that, and understanding that my words would be on pieces of clothing, I started writing. A lot of what I was writing came from the perspective of black love and what that meant to me. Like, “I thought I was too dark until I stretched into a galaxy.” I wanted to offer hope. I was only supposed to have 10 pieces in the collection, but it ended up being 25.

Read on at Complex.