Lagos Fashion Week’s Woven Threads Returns for Its Third Edition

Words by The Folklore Team

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The third edition of Woven Threads, a showcase for African fashion designers by Lagos Fashion Week took place in Lagos between 22-24 April. Featuring a hybrid format the three-day event consisted of a physical installation curated by Nigerian designer Taju Ibrahim of TJWHO, digital presentations and panel discussions as well as the Lagos Fashion Week Swap Shop, with the goal of facilitating conversations among industry insiders and designers in the fashion ecosystem.

Beginning on Earth Day 2022, the theme for this year’s Woven Threads was, aptly, to address the need for sustainable practices and environmentally-friendly processes within the fashion industry in order to create a built-in circular economy. The event aimed to dig deeper into circularity in the fashion ecosystem by exploring conversations about the role of technology in enabling sustainable practices and improving the lifecycle of garments.

The first day began with a visual presentation by sustainable clothing brand Rethread. The brainchild of creative director by Alexa Schempers, Rethread offers upcycled, repurposed and second-hand pieces with the intention to reduce waste and give women an alternative to fast fashion. Other digital presentations were by streetwear brand Abigail Ajobi, Kenyan label Lilabare, Niuku from Mauritius and British-Nigerian Tolu Coker.

The initiative also highlighted several designers who take a considered approach to both sustainability and socio-economic issues in their designs, such as NKWO, IAMISIGO and Pepper Row, and showed previews of the AW22 collections of the Green Access, a cohort of young, emerging designers who are incorporating sustainable practices into their development and processes.

The Fashion Business Series panel discussions covered a range of topics from buying digital fashion to fostering creativity and extending product life cycles. The first panel was on the latter topic, titled “Renting, Thrifting & Extending Product Life Cycles”, with commentators including founder of Kadiju Oyindamola Aleshinloye, and Style Rotate co-founders Cleo Marcopoulos and Natasha Liesner, who spoke on how alternative sustainable systems such as renting clothes, mending and upcycling can help extend the life cycle of garments.

First launched in October 2021, the Swap Shop is a project that encourages consumers to consider the way they can make sustainable changes in their buying choices through exchanging, donating or reselling pre-owned pieces. Items for the Swap Shop at Woven Threads included pieces contributed by designers Mai Atafo and Emmy Kasbit as well as style influencer Eki Ogunbor.

Woven Threads is organized by Style House Files and Lagos Fashion Week in partnership with Fashion Revolution and Fashion Open Studio.