ABELA023 LOOKBOOK 2 IS THE PARIS POP UP WORTH THE HYPE

ABELA023's Lookbook 2 earns the hype. A two day pop up on a quiet corner of the Marais turned into a fully credited fashion editorial, naming a photographer, a creative consultant, five models, and a four person hair and production team most menswear labels this size never bother to name.

That level of credit on a project this scale is the actual story. Most brands announce a pop up with a flyer and a date. ABELA023 published a masthead, and the decision to name everyone involved is what separates a lookbook people talk about from one they scroll past.

Every Name on the Credits Sheet

Photographer @farouk.taleb shot it. Creative consultant @bakiseydi directed the styling. Five models, @jahmaljb, @ambre.ebk, @akumarius, @49ior, and @emmanuelyebe, walked it. @mua.jadeb handled makeup, @sachamass did hair with @braidsquad_ assisting, and @gianni_versacci and @1so.dior ran production. That is eleven credited people on a lookbook drop for a brand most people outside Paris streetwear have not heard of yet. Music rollouts name a producer, a mixer, and a featured artist and call it transparent. ABELA023 named its entire crew for two days of pop up photography, which is closer to how a magazine credits a shoot than how a brand credits a drop.

Ousmane Badirou Built This With His Brother

ABELA023 started as a side project between Ousmane Badirou and his brother, born out of a shared obsession with fashion rather than a business plan. Ousmane has said his mother's love of fabric and his father's insistence on always looking presentable shaped the brand's eye, and his Yoruba roots from Benin and Nigeria run through the designs alongside the mixed culture of the Parisian suburbs he grew up in. The brand pitches itself as a hybrid, streetwear construction with a luxury sensibility, and past collaborations with the atelier Beautiful Struggles have leaned into handmade, one of one detailing rather than mass production. Lookbook 2 reads like the same instinct applied to a pop up instead of a garment.

One of One Is the Whole Business Model

ABELA023's other defining move is a collaboration with the atelier Beautiful Struggles, where the two sides work hand in hand to add handmade, artisanal touches to pieces that started as standard menswear essentials. That is a small batch instinct borrowed from couture, applied to a brand that also sells streetwear silhouettes, and it is the same instinct that turns a two day pop up into eleven credited names instead of a press release. A label chasing volume does not bother crediting its braid assistant. A label chasing a specific, repeatable identity does, because every credited name is proof the process was real and not outsourced to whoever was available that weekend.

66 Rue Du Temple, One Weekend Only

The pop up ran Saturday the 27th and Sunday the 28th of June at 66 rue du Temple, a few streets from where Supreme Paris marked its 10th anniversary with one box logo hoodie in the same Marais blocks. That neighborhood has become the default staging ground for brands that want a Paris address without a Paris flagship budget. Two days, one location, and a lookbook built to outlast the weekend is a formula smaller labels keep borrowing from bigger ones, and it works because the photography, not the storefront, is what actually travels.

The same instinct is showing up further west, where Celine opened a boutique in the 2ème and dropped the Triomphe Mini 01 the same week. Luxury houses and independent labels are converging on the same idea this year. The address is content now, not just infrastructure.

ABELA023 is early, not established, and Lookbook 2 will not change that by itself. Ousmane Badirou and his brother are still running a side project that grew past the side, not a house with a decade of archive behind it. But a brand that credits eleven people on a two day pop up, in a neighborhood where Supreme needed one hoodie and Celine needed a boutique to make the same statement, is telling you how it wants to be judged. That is a harder standard than most labels its size choose to meet, and it is why the Lookbook is the story here, not the storefront. This one is early. It is not small.