Since the thirteen years that Lagos Fashion Week has been formed, many other fashion weeks have popped up around Africa, like Arise Fashion Week, while some others have stopped operations after the pandemic, like Design Fashion Africa, which didn’t continue after 2021. The model Valérie Ka founded Africa Fashion Up the same year to help African designers—many of whom are self-taught—get into the international market. According to David Boye-Doe, the founder of Boyedoe, building a brand in Africa has its advantages and disadvantages compared to major fashion capitals. “It is not easy when it comes to accessibility and scalability,” he said. “When it comes to establishing and sustaining a business, every location has its unique advantages and challenges,” said Funke of FIA Factory. “It is essential to conduct thorough research and leverage the strengths of your chosen location to maximise its potential.”
Fashion weeks help by providing platforms, getting the buyers, PR agencies, and media houses for coverage, elaborated David. Lagos has done a huge job putting the city on the global map, said Peter Acha of Pettre Taylor, who expressed a similar sentiment as Boye-Doye. “It’s a major city in Africa,” he said. “Everyone wants to turn up representing their different tribes and their unique styles.” For Tunde Shorekun of Iso by Liman, the industry has become dynamic and supportive post-pandemic. “There’s a renewed appreciation for locally made products and a stronger push for collaboration within the industry,” he said. Most designers are producing sustainably, and Emmanuel Okoro of Emmy Kasbit mentions how designers are now adapting a more conscious approach towards their production. There’s a strong global interest in African narratives and aesthetics, said Adebayo Okelawal, running Orange Culture for more than a decade. “Consumers are now very fascinated by craftsmanship and storytelling, and this makes it easier,” said Emmanuel, “Because you’re producing locally and in turn empowering the local community.”
 Designers like Juliet Olanipekun incorporate traditional African techniques, like hand-weaving and dyeing, in their work, while others like Acha collaborate with a fabric-dyeing company. There is a certain similarity in many emerging designers’ use of deconstruction and breaking down trousers and jackets into panels—which merges functionality with aesthetics, often drawing from traditional African tailoring techniques, explained Okelawal. 
Thus, most designers at LFW are also part of the Green Access programme, which supports circular fashion designers in the region. Omolabake Temetan of Dust of the Earth mentions how such programs allow emerging designers to be out there. Acha recalled the TechStitched fashion residency in Ethiopia, which helped him learn the entire process of harvesting cotton to natural dyeing, with other designers across Africa, and Okelawal runs Orange Mentorship to provide resources and community to young talents—many of whom learn through experience rather than formal education. Access to funding and global visibility is a challenge, said Tunde. “The Green Access programme was pivotal for me,” he said. “It provided the tools and mentorship necessary to navigate the complexities of sustainable fashion. Over the years, there’s been a noticeable shift toward fostering emerging talent, with more platforms dedicated to education, funding, and market access. These programmes are laying the foundation for a stronger, more globally relevant African fashion industry.” 
ORANGE CULTURE 
When Adebayo Okelawal started his brand fifteen years ago, much of the colour he used was monotone, with structured uses of mixed hues. Over the years, maximalism has become his signature, with print on print, colour on colour. However, this collection, inspired by the colours and prints of his childhood, resorts to minimal pops of colour against monochromatic silhouettes. “Growing up in Nigeria, I was exposed to a vibrant mix of cultures, textures, and colours,” he said, “which naturally influenced my creative lens. This season was a reflection of introspection. While I typically embrace bold, vibrant colours, I felt a need to explore restraint and subtlety, reflecting a calmer, quieter emotional state.” 
Towards this, comic page-like illustrations with dialogue have been printed on some garments. Prints like these allow him to be more playful, he said. Okelawal’s garments are usually in between high fashion and streetwear, and this collection veers sharply towards the former, with clean lines and crisp tailoring of traditional silhouettes. 
Okelawal’s sheer shirts with colourful prints, in the past, have held a special place, as he enjoys working with silk, organza, and jacquard due to their texture and movement. The way he interprets menswear through explosions of colour and bold prints has earmarked his menswear as moving away from the ‘traditionally’ masculine—which he also achieves amidst the minimalism of this collection through hand-beaded pants or chest cutouts in sleeveless blazers. “I want men to feel free to express vulnerability and individuality, whether it’s through soft fabrics, bold prints, or traditionally ‘feminine silhouettes,’” he explained.
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EMMY KASBIT
Emmanuel Okoro has always begun from looking at his connection with Africa’s past, through his father’s childhood photographs or the Nigerian civil war—these in turn take shape in his collections, through official suits deconstructed into panels. Half a decade into forming his brand, Emmanuel Okoro won the Africa Fashion Up initiative and had a mentorship at Balenciaga, opening the possibilities of designing for other markets. Traditional silhouettes are transformed, infused with modern design directions, like cutouts and asymmetrical panels in a formal tube dress from his 2019 collection. 
An amalgamation of contrasting colours is usually his staple, considering the brilliant Ek Ladun coats from last fall/winter. “Vibrant colours make up my collections because I’m very fascinated by cultural events,” said Okoro. “In Igbo land, the new yam festival is an annual event that happens in the East. Communities show up in different colours and textiles to either witness or dance to a particular routine.” Printed or woven motifs of cultural significance are prominent in his collections, from quirky pineapple motifs last year to writing on many of his earlier collections—some of which are based on community market days in the Igbo calendar. In his very last look, he added a Nsibidi symbol, called Dike. “Nsibidi is an ancient form of communication used in Igbo Land long before civilisation happened,” he said. “We first introduced that in the SS18 collection, then brought it back for SS25. It’s an ode to my dad, and that means warrior.” 
In this collection, he was looking back at one decade of the brand, which is expressed through signature elements like asymmetrical shirts or hand-dyed shirts in navy and gold. Fringe details added fluidity, styled with stoic officious shirts, whose trouser variations had quirky silk inserts. Okoro worked with female artisans for hand-dyeing and his Akwete fabric, although this time the silk Akwete suits were produced by Indian artisans, who also developed the detailed colourful embroidered motifs on their jacquard jackets and suits, which was a highlight in the collection.
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DUST OF THE EARTH 
Throughout Omolabake Temetan’s collections, after he started his brand in 2021 after studying fashion design, is a consistent weaving pattern using shoelaces. In his current collection, they hang off jacket sleeves in bright red strips or are deliciously woven into shorts and jackets. Another Green Access designer, Temetan came across the traditional basket weaving technique. “I thought to myself, how else can I create this without using strips of fabric, and that was how the shoelace idea came into play,” he said. “Upcycling has always been a part of my growing up even before I knew what upcycling is. I would go to the local thrift market, get second-hand clothing and upcycle them into new garments.” 
The shoelaces have also woven their way into his accessories for the collection. “We would definitely be doing more accessories in the near future,” he said. In his design language is a contrast of things being tightly woven versus hanging loose. One variation of the shoelace is sewn into the trouser and hangs around it like a fringe, at the same time giving it an essence of deconstruction. It is this essence that is also carried through in his looks using crochet yarn, which become denim panels, imitating ripped jeans. Dyeing techniques, associated with the African spirit and an ode to the flow of rivers in this collection, are especially used to give his looks a dimension of asymmetry, rather than mirroring both sides.
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IAMISIGO 
Design is spiritual for Bubu Ogisi. She equated the colour red in her SS16 collection to Ghanaian warriors, while for her SS21 collection, dressmaking became akin to an act of prayer. She even imagined Naomi as a deity in a collaboration with Victoria’s Secret. In this collection, a tube dress completely made of rings of gold-tinted metal harks back to the armour of gods. Cascades of glistening beads sewn in her oft-used patchwork pattern, also deployed by many designers from the region, play a game of concealing and revealing—which is significant in her design language this season, pairing pieces that hide with outfits that bare it all. 
In the eleven years since she started the brand in her name, repeating it backwards, Ogisi has developed a sustainable practice, using natural materials like raffia and recycling PVC. The patchwork pattern is repeated in plastic iterations. Loose knitted threads and twill-weave cotton chains dangle from garments, deconstruction being essential to this collection, right to the knitwear in sleazy iterations of thigh-high stockings or grungy fingerless gloves that almost go up to the arms. The bags could not have escaped attention, Ogisi having started to incorporate glassblowing into her designs, with the bags being morphed into bright and strange creatures. She will be showcasing at Copenhagen Fashion Week this January, as a finalist for the Zalando Visionary Award 2025.
FIA
The vibrancy of colour is one of the things noticed in Fia’s collection, and one of the three founders of the brand, Funke Asinobi-Ola, mentions how significant colours are to the success of their collections. Flowing, near-sheer, oversized tops and skirts are dyed in variations of red and orange or blues and greens, almost emulating sunsets and blue skies over the body. Fia works with a variety of silhouettes, from printed mesh tube dresses to oversized checkered jackets with deconstructed yarn, carrying a hint of streetwear. 
Asinobi-Ola studied sustainable fashion at the Accademia Del Lusso in Milan and started the brand with Ijeoma and Abisose nine years ago, immediately deciding they’d cater to plus-sized women, making them the only brand in Africa to do so. It is evident through Fia’s immaculate garment construction and signature design language that they’ve spent years in the business perfecting their aesthetic. “When Fia was birthed, there was less representation of contemporary and unconventional African pieces locally and internationally,” said Asinobi-Ola, talking about the use of Aso Oke—a locally woven fabric to create jackets. “This inspired us to bridge the gap in our own way through mixing African and Western prints, introducing structural silhouettes, and expressing fashion in a quirky way.” 
They’ve developed psychedelic prints for this collection, a process that is significant for their collections. Their obsession with lines from the very beginning finds expression in a soft mint-tinted striped top and panelled trousers, while an inverted triangle dress gives the illusion of transforming the body into a two-dimensional paper doll.
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BOYEDOE 
Denim has always had a special place in David Boye-Doe’s heart, with him sending denim after denim down the runway since his very first collection, after he graduated from Ghana’s Joyce Ababio College of Design in 2019. “We use denim because it is versatile, durable, and timeless,” he said, “a comforting constant in the ever-changing world of fashion.” One of the cheekiest things he developed last year was almost a trompe-l’oeil illusion of multiple denim jeans on top of each other, which is seen in this collection in a simple skirt. “I do like to have fun when designing,” he exclaimed. “My sister came back from school one day and I decided to do something playful on her, whilst asking how her day went, and that was how that look was born.” His jeans deconstruct the construction of a denim, to reconstruct it again, now randomised like a jigsaw puzzle. A dress has a jacket lapel playfully running into the sleeve, without materialising as a jacket. 
Boye-Doe was one of the thirty finalists at the Arise Fashion Week’s 30 under 30 New Stars in 2020 and has chosen a sustainable practice, considering the “mountains of discarded clothing that find their way into Africa,” he said. Intertwining traditional textiles like Aso Oke with denim and asymmetrical sheer pants, the designer straddles African design and modern and youthful design. In his early collections, he worked with vibrant indigenous natural-motif patch prints before experimenting with denim—this season, his collection moved into variations of brown and black, with oversized Uncle Fester jackets and distorted pinstripes.
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ESO BY LIMAN
ESO debuted at Lagos Fashion Week last year with a structured jacket whose back had been cut out and replaced with the behind of a flowy tie-dyed denim shirt, giving business in the front, party at the back. An element of deconstruction is strong in collections, particularly the Dead Pants, where he reverses ripped black denim to create new pants or brings a white shirt’s sleeves to the front for a knot. “Deconstruction is like peeling back layers of history and tradition to create something new,” said the founder, Tunde Shoremkun. “I love turning something familiar on its head to reveal a different perspective, especially with traditional garments, forms, and shapes.”
Thus, Shoremkun finds himself looking back to Africa and working with adire, batik, and Aso Oke, along with working with artisans on techniques like patchwork and hand-beading, adding corals to pants. One of his looks, involving a black jacket styled with pink double stripe trousers, has patches of cloth from the trousers patched onto the jacket in the shape of a shoe. Almost referring to Margiela, who used his tabi footprints on his dresses, Shoremkun embroiders or uses patchworks of his shoeprints on his clothes. What is also intriguing about the designer’s shoes is the heels are often created from wood, designed to look like sculptural minimal furniture. 
As a Green Access designer, he works with small batches of clothes and upcycles fabrics. “We use natural dyes in small doses and innovative techniques like piece dyeing and spot dyeing to reduce waste, he said. Working with flowy silhouettes, he adds layers of meaning—be it through thick fringes on shirts or highlighting the sluttiness of everyday menswear, with threads hanging from the nipples.
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AJANÉÉ
For the past couple of seasons, Luqman Ajani has been looking at wraps, after being fascinated by the sensuality in the layering of a traditional Igbo double wrap. His preoccupation took shape last season, with shirt fragments stitched onto pants or their sleeves knotted in the front, enhancing the silhouette. “I think versatility, and I would say functionality of a piece is what stirs my interest towards layering,” he said, “the potential of being able to wear an item in multiple ways.”
A relatively younger brand, Ajani formed Ajanèè in 2021, after studying geology. “I was already a bit invested in fashion,” he laughed. “Going to school to study fashion back then wasn’t such a solid option for a lot of us with traditional Nigerian parents, so a lot of my knowledge was self-taught.” Not unlike many designers, Ajani taught himself by seeing from YouTube. Luqman’s clothing is fluid and moves with the body, draping on it like a second skin. Amidst the concealing wraps, are hand-embroidered motifs on offcut fabric, clinging to the bare chest. 
Giving workwear but making it street, Luqman looks at wraps as armour and deconstructs jackets and trousers into panels—some are even detachable. “I would say the functionality of a piece is what stirs my interest towards layering,” he said, “the potential of being able to wear an item in multiple ways.” As a Green Access designer, he resorts to upcycling, often in humorous ways—one of the white tees in his collection has ‘Bergstorms’ on it, supposed to refer to a construction company, but make it fashion. “I like to engage pre-existing garments from a direction that retains elements that are characteristic to what they were, so graphic tees play heavily into my designs,” he said. A print of two Barbies is oblivious to the world on a T-shirt that appears below the words ‘When I Imagine Myself on Vacay.’ Keith Haring-like prints pop up completely unexpectedly on beige gowns, adding a fun pop of colour.
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LFJ
The past couple of years have been saturated with pleated sculptural garments on red carpets, particularly by much-sought-after Indian designer Gaurav Gupta or the LCF graduate Zhaoyi Yu. Juliet Olanipekun follows on this trend, taking from the natural forms of hard conches and strangely shaped shells from the sea that drape around the body, like a symbiotic being. She believes that sculpting is about the interplay between structure and fluidity and therefore styles the more sculptural with the fluidity of a pleated gown or a pair of trousers that venture into street style with a flare at the bottom by open zippers. 
Like many designers around her, starting their brand during the pandemic, Juliet is a self-taught designer. “The pandemic forced a lot of introspection,” she reflected. “I’ve always had an eye for form and structure, which led me to explore garment construction.” Growing up in London, she took inspiration from McQueen, Miyake, and modern architecture—and she’d like her designs to find other markets too. Within this short period of time, she showcased at NYFW last year and Thailand Fashion Week. “It’s about expanding the brand’s presence, connecting with buyers, and introducing our designs to people who may not have encountered them otherwise,” she explained. 
Campy accessories are where Juliet really shines through—through embellished Club Kid-like headgear, feathery hats, and tube coverings. Her Cosmo pants are voluminous and connected to each other with a tiny string of fabric at the calf. “Accessories are an extension of the story I want to tell,” she said, referring to her oversized fringed brown bag on the runway, “The bag was inspired by the tactile elements of nature and the idea of movement—it’s a blend of utility and artistry.”
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PETTRE TAYLOR
There is something childlike in Peter Acha’s whimsical illustrations on his jackets, with swirly edges like ice-cream droplets. There’s also the rebellion of brown leather jackets, layered and oversized denims, and deconstructed knitwear gowns from his recent collection that signal coming-of-age. “I sculpted the leather fabric to reflect the bumpy ride on the journey of discovery by steaming it in my cooking pot!” said Peter after the show. Clothing is a window to our emotions, he believes, and is embedded into the design quite literally in the see-through areas, he said. Spirituality to him is clearly important, considering his fascination with the idea of the ‘spirit wanderer’ who travels and meets people for bettering themselves for this collection, which is titled We are Nomads
After graduating from a one-year course in a fashion academy in Lagos in 2014, Peter worked as a product developer and pattern maker until finally deciding to start his made-to-order brand in 2019. Currently part of the Green Access accelerator, Peter often uses shreds from their overlocking machine. “When sourcing fabric at the Lagos market, I specifically look for any fabric that is made of natural fibre at my deadstock fabric jobber,” he said. Working with colourful earthy dyes and traditional batik patterns in psychedelic swirls, traditional techniques feature strongly in Peter’s designs, like hand-embroidery in a floral-patterned blue jacket. 
Skirts cut asymmetrically and jacket arms morphed into voluminous shapes, Peter is playfully edgy, sometimes adding bright colours and denim to jackets that could’ve been officewear. The subtlety of appliqued sheer is styled with the sensuality of a one-shoulder suspender attached to trousers that softly pile on the floor with every step, giving it the edginess and drip required to catapult it from senior citizen chic to streetwear.
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