Brand celebrates Igbo fashion culture in new designs

While looking for inspiration from tomorrow, Vlisco&co launched last year in Nigeria. The maiden edition saw Vlisco&co ask Nigerian designers, artists and creatives to join their new young network to explore the future of African print, asking, how will tradition merge with modernity? How will the old be improved by the new?

To solidify its longstanding relationship with African creativity, Vlisco&co in December 2017 hosted two events, in Accra and in Lagos. The event brought together creative minds from both countries and creative people from the Netherlands to showcase their new ideas.

The first ever edition at Alara in Lagos presented an impressive collection by Abiola Olusola and Tokyo James. Olusola’s proposal was a fresh mix of geometrical fashion using classic Vlisco designs while James worked with the new Bubble Wax fabric by Vlisco, presenting a menswear with a strong modern visual statement that captures the future of the brand.

The project also premiered the well-known movie An Allen In Town by Daniel Obasi and exhibited the illustrations of Karo Akpokiere, who reinterpreted classic Vlisco designs, with the talented DJ, Ayel performing during the event.

This year, Vlisco&co has travelled to Nigeria’s culturally rich Igbo land with its creative Nigerian network to deeply research the ethnic group and its relation with their fabrics, after which there was a round table gathering in Lagos to discuss the research and the concept of Vlisco&co’s next edition; the result is a unified visual narrative that mixes a contemporary own story and a research process, thereby exploring the old and the new Igbo culture and the traditions in relations with Vlisco fabrics.

To celebrate this year’s edition, Vlisco&co will incorporate a new movie by Daniel Obasi, while showcasing their teamwork on September 27, 2018, at Art Twenty One with two fashion collections by Gozel Green and Fruche, with photography by Yagazie Emezi and new music composition by talented Dj, Ayel.