After a break of six years, Arise Fashion Week is back and showcased 50 designers from 15 countries over the Easter Holiday weekend in Lagos, Nigeria. The Who is Who of African Fashion and African Creative Excellence attended the event. It felt like all the cool & stylish peeps of the African Fashion World that I love and admire online, came together to have a Fashion Party. Fashion icon Ozwald Boateng presented his latest collection and supermodel Naomi Campbell was walking the runway. The last Arise Fashion Show I attended was in 2012 in NYC and it was already dope, but this new edition of Arise looked beyond amazing.
I kept a close tab on Naomi’s Instagram account during the Arise Fashion weekend and it was fun to see the amazing designs she wore by African Designers, and how much she seemed to enjoy her time in Lagos. At the end she apparently proclaimed that VOGUE is in the need of an “Africa” edition. Maybe we just need more visibility of African creativity in established fashion magazines. With Ghanaian Edward Enninful at the helm of British Vogue, we will hopefully see more of that moving forward.
Designers that showed were to name just a few: Lanre Da Silva Ajayi (Nigeria), Ituen Basi (Nigeria), Maxhosa by Laduma (South Africa), Rich Mnisi (South Africa), Maki Oh (Nigeria), LaurenceAirline (Ivory Coast / France) and so many others.
Hopefully, Arise Fashion is here to stay again and will also do another NYC Show this Fashion Fall.
Credits: Images below from Trevor Stuurman for Vogue UK / Runway shots by Reze Bonna
