The Politics of High Fashion: Lagos Goes Global

by Zoë Hopkins and James Edwin Leech Sedgwick

In recent years, African designers have gained heightened visibility on the global fashion scene. With the birth of Lagos Fashion week, the success of designers like Duro Olowu and Deola Sagoe, and of course the internet, African designers--particularly those from or based in Nigeria--have gained a cache among the international elite and among the gatekeepers of a fashion world that has historically excluded Africa from its purview. But the globalization of African fashion has proven to have a two fold effect of the politicization of African fashion on the continent and in the diaspora. 

The politicization of African fashion is necessarily seated in a historical backdrop. Nigeria has long played a salient role in African fashion. For 500 years, Eastern Nigeria has been a major producer of traditional woven textiles like ankara and aso oke fabrics, which were once used as currency in the region. In the 19th century, weavers began to export these textiles outside of Nigeria, a shift that was in part facilitated by British imperialism. Open air markets in Lagos have been nuclei for the buying and selling of these textiles among Nigerian communities, as well as the operation of tailors and embroiderers. As such, they have served important roles in the maintaining of the cultural traditions Nigerian fabrics have inherited. 

Recently, these fabrics have developed a different kind of currency than has been traditional, as contemporary African designers have given them prominence in their aesthetic lexicon. Lagos based designer Kenneth Ize, who studied fashion in Vienna before moving back to Nigeria, often uses aso oke fabrics handwoven in Lagos in his designs. Amake Osakwe, creator of the hugely successful fashion label Maki Oh, has become known to incorporate traditional Yoruba fabrics into her designs. Like Ize, Osakwe studied in Europe before starting her Lagos-based company. The pattern of Nigerian designers seeking education in Europe is one that should not go unnoticed: it has been a critical catalyst in the global drift of Nigerian fashion. But it also has implications for how the world understands Nigerian designers and the reasons underlying their current popularity. Vogue UK has lauded Ize for “modernizing heritage fabrics and placing them in a fresh context,” pointing to his “Austrian upbringing” as the impetus for this. Rhetoric like this, which echoes the colonial trope of dubbing the West as a paradigm of progress and the non-Western as stuck in the past, begs important political questions about how the Western gaze is interpreting Nigerian fashion as it enjoys a broader, more global audience. What does the commercialization, industrialization, and globalization of African fashion mean for cultural heritage on the continent? Why is success for African designers so often hinged on contact with or proximity to the West? Who is deciding which African designers are successful and what metrics are they using in these decisions? 

A number of Nigerian designers are also leaving Lagos completely, relocating their brands to cities like New York, London, and Berlin. One example of this phenomenon, Lagos born designer Duro Olowu, has become one of the most celebrated African names in the fashion business. Olowu’s position as a London-based designer has indubitably advanced his success, a testament to the idea that the West is still exercising a hand of power and control over the global fashion industry, including fashion that is born out of Africa. 

As has been the case in the arts for centuries, globalization and Western intrigue with non-Western cultural production has also raised questions of appropriation. Like Picasso appropriated African art and design to make his art more “fascinating,” Western fashion designers have taken to using African fabrics and aesthetics to up their cool factor. Recently, New York based designer Stella McCartney came under fire for using ankara fabrics in her Spring/Summer 2018 runway show while only hiring one African model to walk in the show. The question of appropriation is not only relevant for white people with an eye for African design, but also people of the African diaspora. 

Just as African fabrics and patterns have been exported to the Diaspora, so too has the event of African Fashion Week itself. Last August was this year’s Africa Fashion Week London, a part of London’s Black History Month showcasing “over 900 emerging designers & exhibitors, from Africa, Europe and America, to almost 80,000 visitors.” This event, similar to London’s massive annual Notting Hill Carnival during the same month, would have high cultural importance in London due to its high number of immigrants from Africa and African Diaspora countries. However it is also important to consider the politics of such a wide celebration of traditional African culture and aesthetics where some would consider the crux of the history of colonialism and enslavement, but it could also be seen as quite subversive.

Similar to Africa Fashion Week London, another export is African Fashion Week Houston. This year it is taking place October 21-27, overlapping with Nigeria Fashion Week, something which one would assume would have been avoided as it makes those who have the resources to attend both to choose some of each or all of one. African Fashion Week Houston is younger than that in London, its first iteration being in 2014. Why the founder, Nkem Oji-Alala, chose to have it in Houston is not stated on their website, however Houston is known for having a large Black population and one could see such a high celebration of Africa and the Diaspora as subversive similar to in London.

As much of the world of fashion was created, progressed by, and comprised of queer designers, stylists, makeup artists, and so on, it would be remiss to not acknowledge the intersection of Black queer identities in this presentation. Expression of queerness through fashion and other conduits is heavily policed in Nigeria. Lagos based stores like Stranger Lagos have faced pushback for marketing clothes that do not conform to the conventional gender binary. Unfortunately there is little information available online about the queer designers in Lagos Fashion Week specifically, which is not surprising given the reality of Nigeria’s homophobic laws and culture. But of course, there are queer artists around Africa and the Diaspora who are pushing the limits of fashion and its fusion with other art forms. One such group is FAKA, a South African performance art duo. They’re most known for their music, however they were chosen to be the official soundtrack for the Versace Spring Summer 2019 fashion show in Milan. Even without the Donatella Versace stamp of approval, their music videos are themselves incredible works of art and fashion that push the limits of “the cis-hetero-topia of post-colonial Africa.”