By Chinazam Ikechi-Uko.
In Nigeria’s most extravagant city, Lagos, the annual fashion week sponsored by Heineken, Lush hair, Austrian Lace, Makari, Showmax, Bestseller foundation, Techno, Style house files, and Sunlight took place last week at the Federal place hotel.
Popularly known as Heineken Lagos Fashion Week or just Lagos Fashion Week, the fashion week is held to showcase the spring/summer collection of Nigeria’s most coveted fashion labels. Being one of the most anticipated events in Nigeria, the stakes were high. However, Lagosians successfully managed to raise the bar and gave an exciting, creative and unique appearance. To keep track of everything that happened, I have curated a list for you.
Mavin Takeover:
Now it is no secret that Mavin is killing the music game. But it wasn’t known that their artistes could strut a runway. Magixx and Boy Spyce were spotted during separate collections, Magixx walked and closed the show for Rick Dusi and Gëto, he walked down with Allysyn (BBN) alongside the designer, Rick Dusi for the closing courtesy. The next day, Boy Spyce walked for Pepper Row and he closed the Bloke show.
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Celebrities at the FROW (Front Row):
The runway isn’t the only place you could find artistes. Fashion week attracts celebrities like dust to tv screens. It is a chance for them to see their favourite designer’s collection before it hits the stores. A match made in art heaven.
At Lagos fashion week, fashion icons Denola Grey and Eku Edewor were spotted. Also at the FROW was megasuperstar, Davido.
I want to be a baller…
The IT girl might be the most overused term for a young growing fashion icon…, and it never gets old. Brands have different target audiences but there are a select few that are dedicated to giving every hot girl the summer of her life straight out of her wardrobe. Gëto has been the undefeated leader of this niche and aspirational community, don’t believe me? Ask Tems. They renewed their position as leaders with their new collection with cutouts, sheer, and cool colours.
A few other brands that are equally wonderful options for shopping as an it girl are Cute Saint Lagos, Tia Adeola, and Odio Mimonet. Imprint and Ezokhetho (South African brands) are also excellent choices.
For the love of fluidity, androgyny, pastels, stripes and dried raffia?
Now the fashion week was for spring/summer collection so seeing bright colours, sunshades, patterns, enormous hats and bags was a no-brainer. However, the ever-fast-evolving industry that is the fashion industry has found a new darling. Non-gendered clothes are a smart decision if you ask me. Rather than making male clothing or female clothing, just make clothes and anyone who likes them can buy them. We all agree that ashawo clothes look great on everyone, now we need them to be accessible to everyone. We also need it to take over and when I say we, do I mean me? Maybe but ‘we’ sounds more professional.
Another thing that piqued my interest was the use of dried raffia. One day, I had never seen dried raffia used in garment production and by the end of the weekend, I had seen so much raffia used in different ways on a garment. Yet it didn’t feel boring, I acknowledge that there was a trend of dried raffia on the runway but everyone took a different approach to it. I am fascinated by the rise of dried raffia and I hope to see it integrate into our day-to-day lives. The runway showed the main trends that are likely to take over next year: very big bags, dried raffia and ashawo clothing.
There was a hair show:
Were we surprised? Yes. Fashion shows are often an arena to show clothes and sometimes jewellery but a hair collection, that was absurd or was it? In hindsight, considering Lush hair was a sponsor, we should have seen this collab from a mile away. But we didn’t and most people in the audience had questions and one single thought was on everyone’s mind… can they pull this off? Well, all bets were off once the first model stepped on stage.
Lush hair gave us a daring runway with an iconic finale from Denrele (which included him tearing open his shirt, superman style). Lush hair did with hair, things that I didn’t think hair could do. My favourite look was the hair coat.
The shows were fun.
There has been a bit of an argument that fashion had lost its fun and had become too serious. That was certainly not the case at LFW. A few designers gave us quite a show, Tia Adeola had a contemporary dancer open the show with a stellar performance, Odio Mimonet had the models walk with montage music that described the brand and the words “who is Odio Mimonet?” could be heard at least 15 times over the course of the show. Ejiro Amos Tafiri had dancers during the set. We were also gifted with a show-stopping moment a la Bella Hadid getting spray painted at the Coperni show at PFW. The show stopper was the Fruché show. The collection was a tribute to his late dad and for the finale, a model in a black asymmetrical-sleeved dress had a dove with a leaf in its beak live-painted on the dress.
I fell in love.
There is a number of things I love in life, I like to think I am a lover and I love a lot of things but one thing I do not love is waking up early. However, fashion week had me waking up before the sun and preparing my outfit, all because I knew that the fashionable people turn up for fashion week before the time of the event so they can get really good pictures of their outfits. I discovered that I really enjoy taking pictures and asking people how they made their outfits, and what inspired the outfits. The street style drew me in, and I found myself constantly trying to find my favourite street stylers the next day because I wanted to see their outfits for the new day.
I wasn’t so lucky, I guess I would never know what “Accident artist” wore on Day 3. Turns out it is hard to spot someone when you’ve only seen them in Ski googles (Day 1) and in a Guy Fawkes mask aka V for vendetta mask (Day 2). I enjoyed my time with the stylers and they were very glad to strike a pose in their unique attires.
Simply put, Lagos fashion week was a blast and I definitely look forward to next year’s collections. What would be the new trend? Would yellow still be in? Is dried raffia a fad? Would I meet Accident Artist and the other creatives? Would Lush hair return to take our breath away? Questions, and in time I might have my answers.