Skinny Girl in Transit star Sharon Ooja is the new it-girl, front’s Rabesque’s debut campaign ‘Bloom’.

It’s always sort of a gamble when labels use celebrities in their campaign images for their collections. The magnitude of this gamble is amplified when the label is relatively new and the celebrity in question is only coming into her own as a potential it-girl. This is why the new decision by Abuja based label Rabesque to tap actress Sharon Ooja of the ‘Skinny Girl in Transit’ fame to front their campaign really interests us.

Rabesque plays its cards to the letter design wise with the new collection. Its theme ‘Bloom’ is heavily represented the choice of prints used for the collection, abstractions of flowers and other floral motifs are repeated through the entire collection. There are a handful of draped pieces that totally bowled us over, in particular a yellow grecian style full sleeved dress.

There also a definitve leaning towards youthfulness, expressed through mid-rif baring blouses, jump suits with cut-outs  and exposed shoulders, a trend that has all but swept through all the label’s in the country and sadly turned them into clones of each other. And therein lies our problem with Rabesque new collection, it feels too much like an amalgamation of other people’s ideas. There are off-shoulder blouses and dresses, done the style of Nigerian label Rococo’s runaway hit, the ‘Morocco’ blouse.Ejiro Amos tafiri’s distinct wrap Oleku also appears. Frilled bodice detailing, worked by several designers into their collections also appear here too.

Everything is too familiar, to the point where it crosses flattery right into imitation. We like the collection, but we are not sure if we saw it in a store, we’d be able to distinguish it as Rabesque, even with Ooja as the label’s muse.