7 names you need to know this summer

Taken from the new print issue of THE FACE. You can get your copy here.

Deba Hekmat was destined for big things from the age of five. ​“I asked my parents if I could perform for them [for my birthday] – I was wearing a tutu and I was dancing!” Since that gig, the 22-year-old model-slash-actor has bagged herself roles in Luna Carmoon’s debut feature Hoard and Sasha Nathwani’s coming-of- age feature Last Swim. In the latter, she plays Ziba, an Anglo-Iranian teenager celebrating A‑level results day with her friends on a London-wide odyssey. There are plenty of parallels between actor and character: Ziba is Iranian, Deba is Kurdish; Ziba has been raised primarily by her mum, as was Deba. Coming from a working-class background, Deba endeavours to represent her Southeast London community – and amplify their voices through her work. ​“There’s the whole, ​‘I want a seat at the table’ thing,” she says. ​“But I don’t want a seat at a table where no one is like me.” NN

“I live in my memories,” says iKeda Moody-Golding, 27, a Central Saint Martins fine art graduate, fashion designer, musician and artist. ​“I like to include nostalgic references that reflect how I’m always tapping into my unconscious [mind].” For visual art, airbrushing is her technique of choice; she uses it to depict the faces from her dreams in ethereal pieces. That translates into her fashion hustle, too – iKeda airbrushes original designs for her own label and has launched archive fashion project CocoPaparazzi with partner Giacomo Trost. Then there’s music: she coyly describes her upcoming single Cinderella as, simply, ​“yummy”. Much of her work is inspired by an animal that came to her in a dream and often pops up in her painting: ironically for this busy multi-tasker… a snail. ​“It’s a message to take things as they come – that everything happens for a reason and in its own time.” NN

“I was excited to move to the UK because on TV it looked pretty fun – I thought it was like Victorian times!” So says architecture graduate and TikTok star Noris Obijiaku, aka Mr Chuck, who relocated to South London from Italy at the age of 10. Noris admits he was hesitant about posting on TikTok for the first time in 2021 – would people be interested in videos about buildings? (Probably not.) But it paid off. His 198k followers avidly watch histories of the ​“finest blocks in ends” around London. ​“I try my best to incorporate my values [in my work],” says Noris, who also shares his architectural drawings with fans. ​“I’m very much putting people first,” he adds, highlighting his dissertation topic: ​“Is it the people or the design force that caused the decline of social housing?” Does the 24-year-old have a favourite city for landscapes? ​“New York. I need to go this year.” NN

Argentinian designer Lucila Safdie’s origin story started on a girls’ trip to New York with her mum. ​“We were going into shops and I was like, ​‘Oh my God, I love buying clothes,’” says the 26-year-old. Fashion mags came next, then Tumblr, where she discovered Central Saint Martins and set her ambitions on the uni’s womenswear course. By 18, she was on a flight from Buenos Aires to London, ready to enrol. Now, Lucila heads her eponymous brand, collaging references from film, literature and archival pieces in a fresh take on femininity. Think: lace halterneck mini dresses and ruffled gold lamé hotpants. Inspired by poet Sylvia Plath and filmmakers Sofia Coppola and Lucrecia Martel, a fellow Argentinian, Lucila’s clothes are about making ​“the struggle of being a girl” look good. And that’s precisely why she vows to never create menswear. ​“I just want to design clothes for girls like me!” Sorry boys. OP

“I’m interested in bringing contrasting worlds together,” says artist Eric Hesselbo. ​“You take a reference from nature and something very synthetic and create something new.” That’s exactly the inspiration for the 29-year-old’s book Surf Gardens – 50 pages of choppy ocean waves alongside photos of Japanese Zen gardens. The Oxford-born Londoner also keeps himself busy with painting and wood carving; his favourite work is a series of axe handles he created with Calum Stevens, 28, for their joint show Heart Mountain, which they set up in an empty shop in Hackney in 2022. Eric is also part of indie art collectives Tarzana and Diskpak, but when he’s not creating, you’ll probably find him surfing. He’s just back from Australia, where he narrowly escaped a shark attack. ​“I wasn’t scared,” the big fibber claims. ​“The day before, I’d meditated on the idea of being attacked by a shark, so I’d already lived the whole experience.” Alright, Eric, alright… OP

Sam Akpro ditched a biomedical science course at Kingston University in 2020 when he realised uni wasn’t right for him – he preferred to hang out with his rapper and producer mates. Luckily, everything worked out, not least because the 26-year-old ​“had a student loan to buy music equipment”. Growing up in a Gambian and Ivorian Coast household in South London, various musical genres could be heard in the family home. But his early experimentation with trap beats evolved from his love for skate video soundtracks. Now Sam’s style is, you might say, loose: fusing post-rock, funk and jazz. This summer he and his bandmates are playing Corsica Studios and Rally festival in Southeast London. Sam insists that sharing the stage with friends is what brings his music to life. ​“I’ve never played by myself and I don’t think I would. It wouldn’t evoke any sort of emotion.” NN

When London-based trio Mary In The Junkyard finished their debut EP This Old House, they hopped in a car to listen to it all the way through. Their producer, XL Recordings’ boss Richard Russell (who discovered Adele, nbd), was behind the wheel. ​“We went around the block,” says 21-year-old drummer David Addison. ​“Richard timed it to finish exactly as we got back into the driveway of the studio,” adds Saya Barbaglia, 20, who plays bass and viola, alongside guitarist and vo- calist Clari Freeman-Taylor, 20. So, a 17-minute-36-second journey, soundtracked by five tracks of the band’s experimental brand of melancholy rock. Since then, they’ve headlined a UK tour and are now looking ahead to a string of European festival dates. The most exciting thing they’ve done so far? ​“I bought an accordion the other day!” announces Clari. ​“With our band money!” she clarifies, quickly. ​“That felt really good.” OP