Holy shit! It’s fashion week!

The Lagos Fashion and Design Week is the very pinnacle of the Nigerian fashion calendar, drawing designers of Nigerian/African descent from all around the world who come to showcase their newest ideas brought to life on the Lagos Fashion and Design Week Runway. The showcase has also served as a springboard for its own crop of homegrown designers, models, stylists, journalists and photographers who have grown to become internationally celebrated for their groundbreaking work. Now in it’s seventh year, the Lagos Fashion and Design Week is moving house to the Eko Atlantic and promising the best show in years. We are particularly excited about the designers showing this year and have compiled a list of our designers you absolutely have to see this year.

CHRISTIE BROWN GH

Ghanaian design label Christie Brown is finally making its Lagos debut at this year’s Lagos Fashion and Design Week. The brand is known for its attention to detail, its cosmopolitan clothing that celebrates a meeting of African heritage and world class tailoring and its stylish accessories. From what we’ve seen at the Glitz Africa Fashion Week, for this collection Christie Brown has brought on Ghanaian powerhouse talent Papa Oppong. Oppong is master illustrator and a creative genius in his own right, and a collaboration between these two brands is bound to be something to behold. This will be a show you have to see in person.

TITI BELO

Titi Belo rose through the ranks, participating in the 2014 Lagos Fashion and Design Week Fashion Focus Incubator programme where she won a scholarship to study at the Instituto Maragoni in the UK. Since then Titi Belo has honed her talents and built a brand that actual every Nigerian women love and wear. She has focused  her energies on creating clothing for contemporary Nigerian woman and takes inspiration from contemporary Nigerian pop culture. Her collection this season is inspired by her time at Queens College Lagos, and by the secondary school experience in general, and we are intrigued to see how she translates the very specfic style of the 2000’s into contemporary 2017 looks.

GERT JOHAN COETZEE

Another internationally renowned designer making their Lagos Fashion and Design Week debut is South Africa couturier and design behemoth Gert Johan Coetzee. The very apex of design in Africa, Gert Johan Coetzee’s designs have been worn by Hollywood royalty, South Africa’s elite and Nigeria’s biggest socialites. Coming to Nigeria is a strategic decision for him, considering he just finished showing at the South Africa Fashion Week. What better plan to dominate Africa than show on the continent’s two biggest fashion platforms back to back.

CLAN (DEOLA SAGOE)

Since Deola Sagoe focused on her bridal line, Komole by Deola Sagoe, her hip, ready to wear diffusion line run by her daughter Teni Sagoe was put on the back burner for a bit. But now that the Deola Sagoe bridal and bespoke line is firmly established, the designer is turning her attention back to Clan, and making a splash by returning to the Lagos Fashion and Design Week stage. It will be interesting to see just how much of Teni’s influence will play out when Nigeria’s favorite tween high fashion brand makes a play to take back its throne from the other diffusion line by the offspring of a celebrated Nigerian designer.

BRIDGET AWOSIKA

It is always, always, a delight to see Bridget Awosika on any runway. With her attention to detail, her unique and often whimsical approach to design inspiration and her excellent silhouettes, Bridget Awosika has become the label for the woman who wants pieces that will remain evergreen. A firm staple in Tiwa Savage’s dress repertoire, Awosika’s collections are always the standard for subtle but excellent storytelling and we are eager to see where her whimsy takes her this season.

MAKI OH.

Where Bridget Awosika is subtle, Maki Oh is jubilant. Amaka Osakwe never makes a collection that doesn’t take you by the hand and guide you through a whirlwind of emotions as it tells back to you, some intricate but often ignored aspect of living as a contemporary Nigerian woman in a culture that is simultaneously progressive and restrictive. She will be bringing home her Spring 18 collection (which she sort of already debuted in New York) and introducing it again, to us, in person. And anyone who has seen a Maki Oh show in person knows absolutely nothing substitutes for the seeing the real thing up close.

Fashion Week starts today, the 25th of October 2017. If you haven’t gotten your tickets to see the shows yet, here’s how you do it.

You can register for LFDW 2017 daytime events here

You can buy tickets for the runway shows here 

Edwin eats his rice and cabbages. Tweet at him@edgothboy

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