Indigo & Iron

Peace Fam ✨

I need to tell you about this barber chair.

A client brought me a vintage Formatron barber chair — gifted to him by a master barber many years ago in Philadelphia. He asked me to reupholster it. Simple enough, right?

Except somewhere between the tear down and the research, this became something I didn’t plan for.

I started pulling threads — about the chair, about Formatron, about Philadelphia, about the Black barbershop (and beauty parlor) as a sacred space. You know how the shop is. You walk in carrying something and leave lighter. That’s not just a haircut or press n curl.

That’s alchemy. Community. Healing. One of the few places Black people have always been able to show up as their full selves.

Then I found myself deep in the history of denim. And that’s where everything cracked open.

In upholstery, we talk about the honesty of materials. Denim is one of the most honest fabrics in American history, built for endurance, shaped by the body that wears it. But its origins are tied directly to Black labor. To negro cloth. To the hands that built this country and never got the credit.

Everything dope about America has a Black story most people have never heard. The music. The food. The fashion. Denim is no different.

I’m rebuilding this chair in dark indigo denim with African batik accents and piping. I’m may embroider the silhouette of Philadelphia on the back panel. I’m interviewing my client about the history of this chair and the barber who gave it to him. And I’m documenting all of it.

The Rastafarian term ‘InI’ — the oneness of self with all, the divine in me recognizing the divine in you — kept coming to mind. Because that’s what this piece is about. The barber in Philadelphia, the enslaved hands that wore negro cloth, the African textile traditions in the batik, my Jamaican roots, this client’s story — it’s not separate histories. It’s one story told through different materials.

So I named it.

Indigo & Iron.

And I think it might be the most important work I’ve done.

I dropped the first video today across IG, YouTube and TikTok — a 50 second teaser with time lapse footage of the tear down. It’s just the beginning. There’s a full series coming: the research, the making, the interview, the reveal.

If you’ve been rocking with me since the beginning, you already know I don’t do surface level. This is that.

👉🏽 Watch the teaser here

Follow along @houseofnambili on IG & TikTok

Wanna jump down the rabbit hole?

— niCo