Growing up, I was surrounded by fashion in the streets of Warri, where returnees from Europe & the Americas wore extravagant clothes to demonstrate their sophistication, right next to elders who saw every outing as an opportunity to celebrate their connection to the land and expats who dressed in power suits that were ill-fitted to our unforgiving weather. This diversity had historical precedent, because of Warri’s position as a cultural melting point shaped by the discovery of crude oil in the 1960’s and the ‘gold rush’ that followed this discovery.
This impressed on me, early on, that design was a visual language, and our choices can carry meaning that is informed by history, culture, and context. I wanted to understand this language, shape it with my own ideas. So I began experimenting with sewing, my interest in design expressed as tactile play, long before I knew I could make a career out of it. My father knew I needed structure and found me an outlet for my passion through my apprenticeship with a menswear tailor at age 8.
Apprenticeship helped me appreciate the work of translating meaning through clothes, and understand how the diet of fashion magazines and runway shows I consumed through Western media found expression on the streets of Warri. Where fashion was depersonalised and didactic, tailoring was practical, collaborative, and inventive.
In this collection, I revisit my formative experiences with language and the work of assimilating a language that is not designed primarily with us in mind. I am reminded of using the Queen’s primer as a child in Warri, a tool that was used to teach us the rules of an imported language with no consideration of the underlying historical, cultural & social conventions that inform the language and how that mirrored the disconnect between the fashion I saw in the streets and the fashion I consumed in Vogue and on Fashion TV. It was flat and full of restrictions; unlike the language spoken around me, which was osmotic, vibrant, and ever-evolving.
Womenswear over the last decade has conformed to homogeneity in design. But African design has always prioritised functionality over conformity, with versatility and adaptability prioritised above all other concerns. It challenged me to question the whys of conventional fashion, and build my own design framework for Vicnate.
I have had enough time to sharpen my ideas, and translate them into a new design language that distinguishes our hybridised design language, which continues to be perceived as Eurocentric, even though they reflect our Nigerian references & global tastes and sensibilities. Think of this as a subversion of the Queen’s Primer, clothing as language, a deconstruction of the house codes into the building blocks of an adaptive visual vocabulary.
It is impossible to design a collection that interrogates cultural influence on design language without centering sustainability. Functionality this season extends beyond design language to how we source materials and produce our clothes. The mainstays of the Nigerian wardrobe shape this new language: cottons, wool blends, formal suiting fabric, sequinned lace, and poly-tulle. This took us to Aba, the apparel capital of West Africa, where we sourced end-of-line and deadstock in favoured stripes, grids, and polka dots. Each piece in the collection is limited edition, with the final number of pieces produced determined by available stock.
Fabric is a blank canvas, elevated through craft and customisation. Elements of suiting as a visual shorthand for menswear show up in fabric and inform design as detailing, sleeves reimagined as bows, with trouser bands and boning creating structured ’80s-inspired boxy shoulders and ruffled skirts. Bomber jackets, trench jackets, and structured blazers are deconstructed and reconstituted to flatter the female body. Drawstrings and elastic bands from athleisuretransform restrictive suiting fabrics and silhouettes into inclusive, accessible staples that encourage experimentation.
Glamour informs how we design for our muses, and we incorporate this into the collection through meticulous construction and detailed finishing. Functionality shapes our approach to pattern making, and looks are decoupled into separates, each piece an integral part of a new design language that we encourage them to define and interpret through the syntax of personal expression. Patterns and design motifs are revisited and updated, informed by research on the modern woman. Our ideas are fresh and cosmopolitan, mirroring the global palette and the refinement of the Vicnate woman.
We embrace the reinvention of ideas and staples, encouraging our muses to rediscover the joy of dress as play. Colour is how we first parse the world around us, and as Vicnate evolves, we introduce colour to our often muted palette; contrasting confident reds and salmon pink, navy blues and grays with complementary peach pinks, powder blues and chestnuts. The Vicnate signature black makes way for the Vicnate brilliant white, tailored into modish trousers, culottes, shorts and skirts.
The collection draws from our creative director’s expertise with menswear construction, utilising specific elements of suiting, outerwear, and athleisure as motifs for the new collection and exaggerating them for extra flair.
Geometry is a recurring motif; we strip back our design, using basic shapes as a foundation for our construction, transforming circles into skirting, squares for volume, and rectangles for asymmetric hems and detailing. The shapes form the foundation for handkerchief skirts and blouses, trains, and sleeves, circle-cut mini-skirts, and boxy tops. Texture features prominently through manipulated tulle, gathers, and pleating. Maximalism is seeded into the collection through tripled collars, voluminous skirting, asymmetric hems, bias-cut fringe, and exaggerated lapels.
Subtle but informed design considerations, such as vents on shirts and outerwear, address the restrictions of Conventional sizing. Bust and waistlines are lowered or circumvented entirely to ease fit. The Poplin shirt becomes a draped skirt, encouraging our muses to play with ideas, to embrace the idea that imagination is the only limit to a garment’s function.
This collection provides structural support for diverse bodies without sacrificing comfort. The clothes are constructed to flatter a spectrum of silhouettes, complement personal style considerations, and meld seamlessly into an already existing design philosophy. The familiar is distorted to challenge indifference. These are clothes designed to be lived in, to be experimented with, a visual shorthand for a vibrant, eclectic life.
Vicnate team