Ibileye reveals a new dynamic: geometric prints with clashing colours.

Print-designer Sophia Bentoh launches her own silk-screen designs featured in a new collection with the name Ibileye. The theme: African roots meet 80s punk.
Bentoh presents a daring combination of expressive ethnic drawings, graphic forms and rhythmic colouring. Looking at her prints is like looking through a kaleidoscope.

Personal memories and cultures are visibly interwoven in the designs of ‘Ibileye’, the name Bentoh was given by her African grandparents meaning ‘a precious and beautiful piece of fabric.’ How suitable for the collection! Every item is divided in geometric forms coloured with different patterns, in striking complementary or contrasting colours. Bold figurative prints with African origin find the Western ‘pop & punk culture’ of the Eighties. Characteristic for her ethnic drawings is the use of symbolism you see in the designs of her new portfolio.

Typical punk elements like safety pins, lightning flashes and spikes are combined with peace symbols. Using symbolism is common for African prints, different symbols or meanings for different occasions. The styling for the photo shoot got punk-rebellious: with accessories like safety pins and Mohican haircuts, a hair style also seen with some African tribes.

Ibileye presents layered prints and pieces for both women and man, for city nomads who dare to stand out with mixed colours and patterns. In the attachment you find the vision presented in a fashion shoot photographed by Marnix Postma.

Photography: Mark Groeneveld

Back to roots and handicraft

Print- and fashion designer Sophia Bentoh was born in 1979 in Lomé, Togo (West Africa). In the Eighties she moved to the Netherlands with her African father, Dutch mother and little sister. With a father who creates art and a mother who is a doctor and sewing clothes, Bentoh is since her childhood surrounded by special arts and crafts, bright colours and fabrics with showy drawings, like the characteristic African wax prints. This was very stimulating for her own creativity and later on defines the signature of her collection Ibileye. All the drawings for the silk-screen prints are made by hand and on the computer. Her passion for this artisan process existed during her fashion design studies at Artez Arnhem (1998 – 2002).

Before Ibileye:

Sophia Bentoh is since 2001 active in different fields of the fashion industry. The first years as a designer for Stijl Instituut and from 2004 as a freelance stylist for Little Thing Magazine (China), in advertising for brands like Nike and Adidas or as a styling assistant for L’Officiel NL amongst others. Her passion for silk-screen prints emerged again and in 2010 she starts to draw and develop her own prints. Some of those prints were bought and produced on fabric by different clients, used in fashion and interior, and internationally sold. Bentoh also creates her own exclusive series printed on fabric, shirts and bags. She sold those special pieces in shops such as Jutka & Riska Amsterdam or at design markets. On those markets the response was so positive that she got encouraged to bring it to a new level; a complete clothing collection that combines her different prints. In 2014 she founded ‘Ibileye’, hereby presented with an overall vision and concept.

For more information or (high res) images, please send an e-mail to:

info@sophiabentoh.com

With special thanks to:

Team photo shoot Ibileye:
Photography : Marnix Postma, Rooff Management
Hair artist: Tommy Hagen, Angelique Hoorn Management
Make up artist: Anita Jolles, Eric Elenbaas Agency
Model : Thula Neka, Touché Models
Assistants photography: Aleksandra Ukhaneva and Tim van der Most, Studio Ferdinand, Amsterdam.

And to everyone who donated through crowdfunding via www.voordekunst.nl