inspiration: duro olowu and thelma golden

Clearly, London-based fashion designer, Duro Olowu, creates clothes for dreamers, performance poets and serious (but exuberant) lovers. Forget Winter with its offensively low temperatures and vitamin-D deficient mood swings! I'm singing in time with Olowu's version of Spring: percussive patterns in primary colors and flamboyant, shoulder-caressing fabric collages.

Born in Lagos to a Nigerian father and Jamaican mother, "The King of Prints," introduces decadent silk to practical cotton - and a power couple is born. 

Speaking of dynamic couples, Olowu is married to the very smart and very stylish, Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem. In her enthusiastic TED talk below, she invites us to re-imagine art museums as think-tanks and to celebrate Black artists as creative catalysts for community conversations about beauty, power and identity. Word up!

If you're in New York City between now and May 15, 2011, walk into the Museum of Arts and Design to experience the Global Africa Project, a critically-acclaimed exhibition of over 100 visual artists, architects and artisans. This unprecedented show includes pieces by celebrated Haitian Vodou flag artist, George Valris, as well as the Nigerian-American photographer/dandy, Iké Udé. One of Olowu's dresses is on exhibit, too. I caught a sneak peek here.