What Defined Lagos Fashion Week SS26? These 10 Trends
Lagos Fashion Week didn’t try to prove anything this season—it showed up with confidence. Over five days, designers presented collections that felt intentional, each show adding to a broader conversation about what African fashion looks like when it stops seeking validation and starts setting its own terms. Here are the ten trends that defined Spring/Summer […]
Lagos Fashion Week: All the Highlights from Day Five
Over the last four days, more than fifty African designers have showcased on the runway, presenting functional
Hair Culture in West Africa: A Historical and Modern Perspective
Editor’s Note: This feature is part of Guzangs’ ongoing exploration of African hair traditions, tracing their evolution from spiritual practice to global artistry. This installment focuses on West Africa, following Part I, which explored North African hair traditions. Hair in West African cities like Lagos, Accra, Dakar, and Lomé has long been a profound symbol […]
Homegrown to High Fashion: African Musicians’ Style Journey and Cultural Pride
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Burna Boy (@burnaboygram) Burna Boy in Ozwald Boateng at The Met Gala 2025 African musicians have long used fashion to reflect their cultural roots and global ambitions. In the early 2000s, as genres like Afrobeats gained momentum, artists championed local designers, wearing traditional fabrics […]
Not Every Lot Sells: What Bonhams’ African Art Auction Really Reveals
When Bonhams launched the auction for Modern & Contemporary African Art in London, it added yet another chapter to the evolving story of how African and diaspora art is being valued and revalued on the global stage. Now scheduled for 8 October 2025, it will arrive with all the usual signals of a market-watching moment: […]
Inside Ifebuche Madu’s Exhibition of Nigerian Textile and Traditional Dye
Ifebuche Madu believes fashion storytelling must move beyond surface optics, and it’s what led her deeper into curating “In the Beginning, There Was Cloth”—a textile exhibition that brings this truth to the fore, tracing the layered narratives woven into Adire, Akwete, and Uli. “It is a journey that takes us back to our ancient times […]
Beyond the White Lines. Africa, Fashion, and the U.S. Open
The first tennis clubs in Africa were built like fortresses. Behind their gates in Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Casablanca, colonists played in pressed whites while Africans raked clay, carried balls, or stood outside the fence. The game was there but not for them. That shadow framed a remark by South African designer Wanda Lephoto […]
How African Music Conquered the World (and Why It’s Just Getting Started)
African music has always transcended mere sound. It is memory incarnate, ritual transformed into rhythm, protest given voice, and joy made manifest—a living pulse that carries history from one generation to the next. Over centuries, that pulse has traveled across oceans, first carried by force through slavery, later shared by choice through cultural exchange. […]
Snatched Waists and Style Play: The Corsetification of Nigerian Fashion
Corsetification in Nigerian fashion is cinching itself into the heart of style, emerging from Lagos red carpets, owambes, and endless scrolls of Instagram and TikTok. It’s a waist, pulled tight, hyper-defined, framed by elaborate bustiers and couture-heavy tailoring that now defines one of the most visible aesthetics of Nigerian femininity. This isn’t just a trend, […]
Cowrie Shells Carry Africa’s Past Into Fashion’s Future
When Beyoncé appeared in Black Is King, her face veiled in a mask of cowrie shells, the world saw ornament. Africans saw memory. These glossy shells once banned, once branded “demonic” had returned to the global stage, shimmering with pride. Behind them stood Lafalaise Dion, the Ivorian designer who has become the “Queen of Cowries,” […]