Inside the Room

Five gatherings on our radar this October, from Black Coffee’s Brooklyn set to contemporary African art in London and music in the Arizona desert.

Written by Simone Ellis

October brought plenty of reasons to gather, from a Saturday night with Black Coffee in Brooklyn to the galleries of Somerset House and Shanghai’s runways. For this edition of Inside the Room, BLANC looks at five events across fashion, art and music, tracing the artists, communities and places that made each worth our attention.

1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London

From October 15–18, 1-54 brought together 40 galleries at Somerset House, presenting artists from Africa and its diaspora during London’s art week. April Bey, whose artwork accompanies this roundup, was among the featured voices, alongside Hassan Hajjaj, whose My London Rockstars celebrated the city’s creative personalities through his distinctive portraiture. The fair also looked back through West Wind, Nancy Dantas’s presentation of pioneering African modernists, including Bertina Lopes and Ibrahim El-Salahi. Across generations and disciplines, the program offered a rich encounter with the many histories and perspectives shaping African art.

Black Coffee at Pacha New York

Black Coffee took over Pacha New York on Saturday, October 17, as the Brooklyn venue closed its first open-air season. His blend of Afro-house, deep house, and soul has made him a major draw worldwide, but there is something special about hearing his music on a night out in New York. He gives tracks room to breathe, working through layers of percussion and vocals without rushing towards the next big moment. The music has warmth and weight, with melodies that stay with you and rhythms that make it hard to stand still. For those holding onto the last outdoor nights of the year, it was a good reason to spend Saturday dancing well into Sunday

Shanghai Fashion Week, Shanghai

Shanghai’s Spring/Summer 2027 season brought a revealing combination of creative ambition and practical thinking. Across the October 8–16 shows and presentations, designers including Shushu/Tong, Pronounce and Xu Zhi explored how a distinctive design language can move into everyday wardrobes. Beyond the runway, store openings and pop-ups brought labels into closer contact with their customers. Together, these developments offered a picture of a fashion community thinking carefully about both its creative identity and its future.

Tiffany & Co. Artist-to-Artist at Frieze, London

At Frieze London, Tiffany & Co.’s Artist-to-Artist program gave established artists the opportunity to direct attention towards a new generation. Among this year’s pairings was Yinka Shonibare’s nomination of Unathi Mkonto, the self-taught Cape Town artist whose practice spans drawing, sculpture, installation and performance. With a background in architecture, Mkonto considers how the spaces we build shape the lives we lead. His presentation offered a compelling entry point into the fair, grounded in South African experience and an expansive understanding of what architecture can become.

EDIT Napoli, Naples

From October 9–11, EDIT Napoli brought independent design to La Santissima, a former monastery in the heart of Naples. The fair’s focus on editorial design gave furniture, lighting and objects the kind of attention usually reserved for an artwork, with materials and the choices behind their making central to the conversation. Beyond the main exhibition, the EDIT Cult program placed special projects in some of the city’s most significant cultural spaces. It offered a reason to explore Naples through design, moving between new work and the buildings that hold its history.

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