Mustafa Details

While many luxury brands have attached themselves to activism, streetwear and "cool things" in ways that don’t always feel believable, Pierpaolo Piccioli, the creative director of Valentino, has made the collection feel relevant in meaningful ways—whether that's co-designing pieces for the men's fall 2019 collection with Undercover’s Jun Takahashi or featuring 43 black models in the spring/summer 2019 women's couture collection.

As recently as a year ago, Mustafa Ahmed, a 23-year-old poet, singer, and songwriter from Toronto who has worked with artists including Drake, the Weeknd, Daniel Caesar and Camila Cabello, didn't know what Valentino was. But after receiving a DM from the Maison Valentino Instagram account, which he initially ignored, he learned about the significance of the luxury house from his model friends.

From there, Ahmed, who goes by Mustafa the Poet, started a relationship with the brand, which began with a video collaboration for the men's fall 2019 show, then attending the women's couture show, and finally collaborating directly with Piccioli on the women's fall 2019 collection. Ahmed's poetry was embroidered on 25 pieces in the collection.

This is a new world for Ahmed, who began performing spoken word as a child before starting the Halal Gang, a collective of artists from Toronto made up of Ahmed, Puffy L’z, Mo-G, Safe, and Smoke Dawg, who was murdered last year. Here,