Watch the Dior Men Spring 2021 Menswear Video

[waves crashing]

My name is Amoako Boafo and I am an artist.

[light switch clicks] [lights buzzing]

[blade whooshes]

I learned everything myself from the beginning.

I mean as a kid, I have few friends

that were also interested in drawing,

so we would just sit and compete

and see who is best at drawing.

And that's how it started.

I do portraiture and I do figuration.

When I do portraiture, I like flat colors

because I want a background that compliments the portrait,

not something that, you know, disrupt

or take away something.

So when I do portrait, I like to keep it simple

so people can just, you know, get the expression.

[people chattering]

[men speaking in a foreign language]

the people that I paint varies from friends to family

to people that I admire to people that create space

for other people to coexist in it.

It's a finger-painting technique.

I just wear my gloves and I have my colors

which will be umber brown and blue,

and then I have some yellow and red,

and I do magic with it.

[dramatic instrumental music]

[singing in a foreign language]

Well, I mean I love fashion, fashion inspires my work.

And so I tend to look at characters that, you know,

have that sense of style in fashion,

and I mean, if you look at, you know, some of the paintings

that I paint like Hudson in a Baby Blue Suit, for example.

You know, he's a model and I like his sense of fashion.

So, the interesting part for me,

working with a fashion house,

is how they were able to transfer

my finger-painting technique onto clothes.

[dramatic instrumental music]

I really, really, really love his work,

and I wanted to work with an African artist for a long time

because I grew up in Africa and African art is something

that's always been important to me.

[tense instrumental music]

[people chattering]

We start with the idea of ivy,

which is a very famous Dior dress.

And when we were in Ghana we saw a beautiful new work

of his which had a guy in an ivy shirt,

and that was the starting point for the ideas of taking

the textures and the prints and the patterns from his work,

and the colors and really turning that into the portraits

coming to life.

[tense instrumental music]

the styling of the collectsion is really looking at

his painting and seeing the characters he created,

and what he was painting in reality,

and then bringing it back to life in a different way.

[tense instrumental music]

[singing in a foreign language]

Originally, the idea was for a show,

which, you know, now is impossible to do,

and I completely appreciate why.

So we looked at the idea of focusing on his life

and his subject and his portraits creating something

that is very Dior but portrait an artist

that I greatly admire.

[dramatic instrumental music] [sings in a foreign language]

[waves crashing]

[branch rustling] [birds chirping]

[melancholy instrumental music]

[wind rustling]

[birds chirping]

[pensive instrumental music]

[sweeping instrumental music]

[pensive instrumental music]