EP03 | He Made Millions of People Unforgettable. Almost Noone Knew His Name

For Ten Years, Nobody Knew His Face. You have seen his work more times than you can count. The Sauti Sol album covers. The award show moments. The looks that got screenshot and shared and copied. Amina on television, dressed so well that people tuned in just to see what she was wearing that week. You know all of it. You have never known who made it. That was deliberate. Until 2020, there was almost no photograph of Brian Babu anywhere. He posted his work and never himself. If you knew the name, you knew the name; but you did not know the face, and most people did not even know the name. He was happy there. Behind the camera, inside the moment, making other people unforgettable and going home. Then during the pandemic he appeared on a couple of episodes of a show; casually, not thinking much of it and the country finally put a face to the work. Ten years of building something enormous while remaining completely invisible. But here is where the conversation gets genuinely interesting. Ask him what styling is and he will tell you it has almost nothing to do with clothes. When an artist walks into his studio, he does not talk about fabric. He asks about them. What music do you listen to? What do you like eating? Where do you hang out? Who are you actually? Because what he is building is not an outfit. It is an identity; the thing people see and decide about you before you have opened your mouth. And he knows when he has got it right by one signal. It has to feel like a second skin. Like the person is not playing a role or wearing a costume, but simply, more completely, themselves. #BuiltDifferent #FindingPurpose #BrianBabu #NaboCapital