What Contributes to Africa Fashion’s Renaissance Globally
The leadership of local industry
To this end, the pioneering efforts of Omoyemi Akerele, founder of Lagos Fashion and Design Week is significant. Over the past seven years, Akerele has lobbied for the local and wider African fashion industries both at home and abroad. She has taken advantage of her global network and convening power to seek solutions to the particular challenges faced by African brands and provided a considerable platform for menswear designers from the continent.
“Menswear collections keep getting stronger season in, season out. And with the extension of the LFDW platform beyond Nigerian designers to a pan-African platform, there’s an increasing need to create programmes solely dedicated to promoting menswear via the platform,” she says, pointing to the need to better “connect the dots”, ensuring designers, retailers, financiers and representatives of legislation bodies work in concert to create an ecosystem that is conducive to supporting the industry long term.
The menswear renaissance in Africa would be nothing without its local retail champions. Three Nigerian retailers at the vanguard are Temple Muse, Alara and Stranger. As the oldest of the three, Temple Muse, founded by former Selfridgesbuyer Avi Wadhwani and his brother Kabir Wadhwani, has enjoyed many retailing firsts: acting as a launch pad for African-grown talent such as Tzar Studio and Kelechi Odu and more recently the highly-anticipated collaboration between Ugo Mozie and Bailey Hats. They were also first to showcase Balmain and Lanvin menswear.
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