Celebrating 10 Years of Lagos Fashion Week

Welcome to Lagos: Home of African fashion
Lagos, the host city of Lagos Fashion Week, is an attraction in itself. A metropolitan island that features an interesting mix of people, cultures and is fast becoming the melting point for business in Africa. Participants, designers, and visitors alike can expect a diversified and interactive platform to maximize their exposure within and beyond their industry circle and open gateways for more business opportunities.

The five pillars of Lagos Fashion Week:
The mission of Lagos Fashion Week is to support:
1. Creativity and position Lagos as one of Africa’s creative capitals.
2. Entrepreneurship and build on the sector’s capacity to contribute to Nigeria’s economy.
3. Retail and create opportunities for fashion retail to thrive in Nigeria.
4. Craftsmanship and explore artisanal skills across the country as fundamental to ‘African’ fashion.
5. Connecting the Dots by reinforcing the role fashion’s value chain plays in the growth of the sector.

Runway Shows and Presentations
An annual tentpole event featuring new season collections from designers in the African and international fashion industry over a multi-day period.

Positioning Lagos Fashion Week
Lagos Fashion Week has also expanded its scope with three main platforms that run concurrently with fashion week - Fashion Business Series, Fashion Focus Africa and Lagos Fashion Week Presents. The former offers industry master classes and the latter provides incubation support for emerging talents across the continent. Lagos Fashion Week also advocates for the industry with the Nigerian government as well as potential investors.

Fashion Business Series
A platform dedicated to facilitating conversations with key players from the Nigerian and international fashion industry as a useful tool for exchanging ideas, networking and developing the fashion industry. Past themes include : ‘Beyond Fashion’ and ‘The Future of Fashion: Manufacturing’

Fashion Focus Fund
The initiative provides a grant annually to support beneficiaries of Fashion Focus Africa. Previous Fashion Focus Fund winners include Emmy Kasbit and Cynthia Abila. Fashion Focus has also mentored brands such as IAMISIGO, Orange Culture, Gozel Green and Fruche over the past 10 years.

Green Access
Green Access is a talent discovery platform by Lagos Fashion Week with a vision to encourage designers to create social, economic and environmentally sustainable fashion brands.

Green Access aims to discover raw fashion talent in Nigeria and inspire them to consciously begin and explore sustainable ways of achieving their design goals.

Designers that are selected on the Green Access programme go through workshops that teach sustainable design practices and are awarded a shared debut on the Lagos Fashion Week runway.

Collaborations
For the Spring / Summer 2020 season, Lagos Fashion Week collaborated with Kobird (a revolving destination themed concept store in London) to create an edit of the most exciting African brands to show at Lagos Fashion Week including Orange Culture, Lisa Folawiyo, Ejiro Amos Tafiri, Loza Maleombho amongst others. The Koibird visits Lagos Fashion Week edit is currently available in store and to shop online.

"For 10 years Lagos Fashion Week has cultivated a strategy that focuses on Impact, Collaboration, Community and Co-creation. The growth that we have experienced in these areas alone is a testament to the resilience, drive and talent that exists on the continent. This year’s Lagos Fashion Week is a celebration, not only because we have achieved an important milestone, but we have managed to hold firm and our resolve has enabled us to innovate despite the current climate”

Omoyemi Akerele - Founder, Lagos Fashion Week