Watch the amazing display of Africa’s print by beautiful models and a special interview with fashionista Princess Ronke Ademiluyi, founder, of Africa Fashion Week, London and Nigeria, as she shares a bit about her journey into the industry and her source of inspiration.
The Africa Fashion Week Nigeria, AFWN, was established in 2014 to showcase talented fashion designers who remain largely unknown and to further strengthen and develop the international competitiveness of Nigeria’s fashion industry.
Africa Fashion Week Nigeria is an initiative that will celebrate and promote Nigeria’s diverse fashion culture.
It acts as a tool for designers who cannot yet afford to showcase on an international platform, giving them a chance to show their collections on the runway.
Talking about how she started, Princess Ronke said, I don’t like doing things small because the same time and effort you spent doing something small is the same time you spend doing something big so we started big in 2011 and we had about 60 designers from the continent of Africa and about 4700 visitors turned up.
It has been growing since then and the success of the first Africa Fashion Week in London has inspired so many people to start up fashion week in cities around the world.
Did you ever feel obligated to make sure it had everything to do with Africa or did you try to involve other cultures as well?
It’s African fashion week, it’s promoting African fashion, it’s showcasing the best of African fashion.
However, we do have some other people who are not really Africans but there are interested in the African cultures and fashion because when the designers come they don’t just come to showcase on the runway, they come with their culture and Africa has about 300,000 different tribes and when they come on the runway, it’s always a mixture of vibrant colours, culture and heritage fabric.
You do have an adIre hub in Ilefe yea?
Yes
Tell us about it.
It is an indigenous Adire factory. We opened it in 2021 under the chairmanship of his imperial Majesty Ooni of Ife. It was opened as a Covid bounce-back facility.
His majesty and I came up with the idea of using our heritage fabric as a way of creating a tour for women in the local community and since then it’s been growing.
We now work with the Obafemi Awolowo University under the textile department. Merging the student and women together to come up with innovative and creative modern designs.
