Eloghosa Osunde’s Necessary Fiction Is a Cultural Earthquake
“Necessary Fiction is coming.” Eloghosa Osunde doesn’t say this like a casual heads-up. She says it like a prophecy. Like something already in motion. When she speaks about her second novel, her voice carries the same urgency as the text itself—a novel that refuses to sit quietly on a shelf. Osunde’s debut, Vagabonds!, shook tables […]
WORN OUT — Part II: How African Governments Are Responding to the Textile Waste Crisis
Western wardrobes don’t end in Europe or North America. They spill quietly, devastatingly onto African soil, packed into shipping containers and sold in open-air markets under the guise of “donations.” But from Accra to Kigali, Dakar to Lusaka, something is shifting. The bales keep arriving. The markets keep choking. But across the continent, a patchwork […]
Legacy African Fashion Houses That Defined the Continent’s Style Future
Fashion across the continent has always been rooted in craftsmanship, talent, and boundless creativity—and nowhere is that more evident than in the pioneering legacy houses that rose to prominence from the 1980s onward. These houses wove an African narrative that resisted reductive stereotypes and demanded global recognition for its innovation and cultural depth. Their ateliers […]
Inside Oshobor: Where Heritage, Healing, and Haute Craft Collide
In 2020, during one of the hardest periods of his life, Peter Odion sat quietly in his Benin City workshop, mending torn fabric by hand. What began as therapy would soon become a signature. Stitch by stitch, he transformed pain into process, and process into fashion. That quiet moment laid the foundation for Oshobor, the […]
Data Oruwari Channels Ancestral Wisdom Through Art and Sound
In a world seduced by speed, surface, and spectacle, Data Oruwari moves like an ancestral drumbeat — steady, sacred, and impossible to ignore. Known as The Ancestors’ Scribe, she is not merely a visual artist, but a sound alchemist, a spiritual technologist, and a living archive of African ancestral cosmology. Through glyphs etched in ink […]
Footprints in Fashion: THE BLOCC and the Rise of Wearable Art
From a small studio in Lagos, Biodun Ariori is building one of the most compelling voices in contemporary footwear. His label, THE BLOCC (formerly theshoeblocc), crafts shoes that move beyond utility transforming them into sculptural, expressive statements of identity and presence. His work first caught our attention during Guzangs’ debut cover shoot, where he was […]
Amazon Prime Day 2025: Best Deals from African-Owned Beauty Brands
As Amazon’s Prime Day heats up this July, it’s not just big-box brands drawing attention. A new wave of African-owned beauty brands is tapping into the global shopping frenzy, offering high-performance skincare and makeup rooted in culture, innovation, and intentionality. From Lagos to London, these brands are using Amazon’s vast reach to scale their businesses, […]
Prints of a Place: Banke Kuku’s Lagos-Born Language of Luxury
The designer Banke Kuku. Photo credit: courtesy of Banke Kuku. Banke Kuku is shaping contemporary luxury through a signature fusion of Nigerian heritage and modern print innovation—an approach rooted in her culture and a steadfast commitment to sustainability. In her vision, luxury extends beyond mere fabric or form—it becomes a narrative: the way a print […]
Luxury Dreams, Local Struggles: The Price of African Fashion Today
African fashion has been experiencing a delightful renaissance. From Lagos to Abidjan, Dakar to Nairobi, designers are capturing global attention with their creativity, craftsmanship, and cultural storytelling. But beneath the glamour, many African consumers are voicing a growing concern: the escalating cost of homegrown fashion is driving them out of the market. As inflation and […]
OUR TOWN: The Film Capturing a West African Movement on Wheels and Waves
Some stories don’t arrive through words. They show up in motion—on boards, in waves, and in the spaces young people carve out for themselves. OUR TOWN is one of them. Directed by Lounseny Soumah, the 35-minute documentary premiered yesterday at MK2 Bibliothèque in Paris. It follows Skate Tour GH, a 2022 road trip that brought […]