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Two of the past three issues of a new fashion publication, Boy Brother Friend, have opened on the subject of war. There is, according to Kk Obi, the founder, and Matthew Benson, the editorial director, no way around this tension when the magazine’s subject is the African continent and its diaspora.
In other words, they can’t be like the legacy fashion outlets and independent magazines that separate the polish of extreme luxury and conglomerate-funded creativity from the discomfort of struggle. “Those publications don’t say much about the real things that are happening in the world,” Obi said. “They focus on more of a stylized idea of what the world is, and we’re trying to bridge that gap.”
Obi, who is Nigerian, set out to start Boy Brother Friend as a place to examine ”the serious things that are affecting our reality as Africans, as diasporans—conversations around religion, gender, sexuality—these things that we would speak about with friends, in our homes, in the bar, but we would just never talk about on platforms as much.”
Issue 7, which was released last winter, explored the effects of conflict in Sudan, where a civil war has raged since April 2023, when the country’s two military powers, the national Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, went from coconspirators to rivals. Millions have been displaced, tens of thousands killed, cities destroyed.
The Sudan issue has several covers. Some involve fashion staples: a model with a striking gaze, an artist swathed in the latest designs. But another shows a photo of life in Sudan before wartime––a hazy image of women and men––seemingly superimposed onto a scene of a military tank in the street by photographer Hassan Kamil. Another features a photograph of centuries-old pyramids, before present-day Sudanese borders were drawn, taken by the photojournalist Nichole Sobecki.
There is a conversation between a Sudanese political expert, a scholar-activist, and a film star about the “tyranny of identity politics” as it relates to their country. A photo-essay shows the Sudanese community of artists, activists, and intellectuals who found refuge in Cairo when war broke out. In another feature, the artist Ahmed Umar queers Sudanese traditional dress.
Telling these stories through the lens of design allows for more stories to be told, they feel. “It was important to showcase women, queer people, but it wasn’t the obsession,” Benson, who is the Sudans Research Director at the London School of Economics, said. “It was much more about showcasing the kind of spirit and vibrancy of people who are working in Sudan and were pivotal in overthrowing the Bashir regime.
“It just felt like finally we have a space for this, because it doesn’t fit within this neat kind of shiny CNN narrative that you see,” he added.
Boy Brother Friend’s exploration of Africa caught the eye of designer Riccardo Tisci, who rose to fame at Givenchy and Burberry, and who guest-edited a recent issue. In it he featured British Ghanaian writer and actress Michaela Coel. The images caused a splash––they were featured on billboards in Times Square and received millions of likes on Instagram.
“Riccardo knows how to make noise and create, like, an internet buzz,” Obi said. “And I think that’s what we’ve learned a lot from, because magazines—we need visibility. Like obviously we want to be able to have hard conversations, but we need the audience to be receptive of that conversation.”
And it seems the lessons on creating buzz were applied to the latest issue, in which the artist Kara Walker’s rendering of Barack Obama as Othello holding what appears to be Donald Trump’s severed head is a cover. The artist features continue with a spread showcasing sculptor King Cobra’s work, which emulates human flesh. In an interview with Benson, she discusses creating sculptures that depict the impact of disease on white bodies––a departure from her works that have shown the history of perverse medical experimentation on Black bodies. One piece is titled White Assholes.
These pieces are folded in between photo-essays of Pharrell Williams’s work for Louis Vuitton––complete with models crying blood––a photoshoot on choreographer Sean Bankhead and how his work makes songs go viral, a fashion spread in Côte d’Ivoire, and several more essays exploring subjects like carceral violence in Atlanta, Nigerian pop stars of the seventies, and a post–African American paradise.
It all makes for a publication that is somewhere between the traditions of African literary magazines of the past, like Black Orpheus and Transitions, except “here there’s a weaponization of glamour and using beauty as a shield in the face of adversity, war, plague, rape, and other obstacles,” Benson said.
Why Obi ultimately decided to start a print publication at a time of extreme precariousness for the industry is simple. “There’s nothing really like telling a story in print that exists on Instagram, even on film,” Obi said. “Because of how you mix text and images, it just doesn’t really transfer, the emotions you feel, when you see certain words next to certain images.… I think that’s kind of why we continue to love and do this.”
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