What Happened in African Fashion Last Week
- Hamza Olalekan Dosunmu
- Dec 22, 2025
- 3 min read
Last week’s African fashion landscape highlighted leadership, collaboration, and cultural expression. LA Fashion Week centred women-led industry dialogue, Africa Fashion Week Nigeria opened with a celebration of craft and ceremony, and Silkcoat announced a new partnership supporting grassroots designers.
Clearly Invincible brings you the latest weekly African fashion recap.
Fashion Week
LA Fashion Week 2025 foregrounds dialogue and women-led leadership alongside runway presentations
LA Fashion Week 2025 expanded beyond runway presentations, positioning the programme as a platform for knowledge exchange, policy discussion, and cultural dialogue within the African fashion ecosystem.
The week opened with a women-led masterclass focused on advancing women’s participation and leadership across the industry, examining the intersections of policy, entrepreneurship, and creative practice.
Speakers included Georgette Griffiths, co-founder of the fashion week alongside Elie Kuame; Madame Kouassi Blé, Director of the Promotion of the Fashion and Design Industry at the Ministry of Culture and Francophonie; wellness and beauty entrepreneur Sery Dorcas; and designers Simone and Elise, whose contributions reflected institutional, commercial, and creative perspectives shaping contemporary African fashion.
The session set the tone for a fashion week defined as much by dialogue and leadership development as by presentation.
Collaboration
Silkcoat Partners Threads of Africa Fashion Week to Empower Grassroots Designers
Silkcoat has partnered with Threads of Africa Fashion Week to support five grassroots female fashion designers through a ₦7.5 million empowerment initiative announced in Abuja.
The collaboration will fund professional training, capacity building, and business development, positioning the designers for industry visibility and long-term growth, with their work set to be unveiled at the 2025 edition of Threads of Africa Fashion Week in early 2026.
Brand
Wear in the World? by Lulu Shabell Introduces a Gift Guide with Geographic Intent
The inaugural instalment of Wear in the World? by Lulu Shabell presents a gifting guide shaped by place, authorship, and longevity. Curated with geographic intention, the edit highlights four African luxury brands—Sukeina, Kumesu, Armando Cabral, and Lola Fenhirst—each representing a distinct approach to craftsmanship and design.
From Sukeina’s fluid tailoring and Kumesu’s refined leatherwork to Armando Cabral’s heritage-led practice and Lola Fenhirst’s architectural fine jewellery, the selection positions gifting as an act of cultural consideration rather than seasonal consumption.
The curation frames these pieces as objects designed for continuity: worn in the present, valued over time, and carried forward beyond the moment of exchange.
Fashion Week
AFWN 2025 Kicks Off with a Celebration of Nigerian Craft, Culture, and Ceremony
Africa Fashion Week Nigeria (AFWN) 2025 opened at the J. Randle Centre in Onikan, Lagos, with a first day defined by high energy, craftsmanship, and cultural focus. Day one featured a vibrant marketplace and runway moments that set the tone for the week, leading into preparations for the Nigerian Cultural and Wedding Showcase and the Influencers Runway.
The programme foregrounded Nigerian tradition as a contemporary design language, with collections translating wedding aesthetics—from sculptural geles to expansive agbadas—into high-fashion expressions of ceremony and identity. As the 11th edition progressed, designers delivered presentations that emphasised regality, detail, and cultural continuity, while the presence of community leaders and royal figures reinforced fashion’s role as a living extension of heritage.
AFWN 2025 positioned its opening not simply as spectacle, but as an intentional reframing of Nigerian wedding culture within modern fashion discourse.
Brand
IMPRINT presents Resort 2026 collection informed by indigenous butterfly forms
IMPRINT’s Resort 2026 collection, Indalo kaSomandla, draws from the structural logic of South Africa’s indigenous butterflies, using symmetry, colour, and form as foundational design principles rather than decorative reference.
Presented under the theme Synthetic Sun, the collection examines the relationship between natural systems and contemporary design by translating existing patterns in nature into considered silhouettes and surface treatments.
By aligning ancestral knowledge with digital experimentation, the collection frames technology as a tool for interpretation rather than replacement, using geometry, balance, and repetition to suggest continuity between natural order and future-facing design processes.
Join us in shaping the future of African fashion. Sign Up to become a part of the Clearly Invincible fashion community and for a consultation to aid your fashion entrepreneurship journey.
Fashion Services: Illustrations | Collection Planning | Portfolio's | Consultations
Comments