When Ikpen Yvonne Akwitti arrived in Kampala for Uganda International Fashion Week, she did not come empty-handed. The Nigerian designer arrived with two suitcases and hand luggage, packed with pieces from her Abuja-based label, IK-PEN. She would later discover that bringing African fashion into another African country could be more complicated than packing a suitcase.
At the airport, officials questioned the quantity of fabric she was carrying. She had to explain that she was in Kampala for the fashion week and a pop-up, and that the fabrics were part of what she had brought for the occasion.
The episode became an unexpected illustration of a problem Akwitti has been talking about for years: Africa has the fashion, the creativity and the materials, but moving them around the continent is not always easy.
For a designer whose ambition is to see African fashion become part of the world’s everyday wardrobe, the irony was difficult to miss.
Designing for the continent
IK-PEN, founded in 2006, has built identity around contemporary women’s clothing made from traditional African textiles. The brand has previously been described as a luxury label combining bespoke and ready-to-wear pieces, with its designs drawing on ethnic details while moving between bridal, everyday, resort and glamorous wear.
In Kampala, however, Akwitti was not only interested in the runway.
Alongside her appearance at the fashion week, IK-PEN held a pop-up at Tavola Restaurant, allowing Ugandan women to see, touch and buy the clothes rather than merely watching them on the runway.
That distinction matters to Akwitti.
‘Africa is an interesting fashion scene,’ she says. ‘People keep asking themselves, who’s wearing the clothes that are coming out of Africa?’
The question points to one of the peculiarities of African fashion. Designers can build international reputations, appear at fashion weeks and have their work photographed for audiences around the world, while the people living closest to the source of those designs may struggle to access them.
Akwitti does not see the answer as making African fashion cheaper simply to make it accessible.
For her, IK-PEN is a legacy brand.
‘We are not just selling a product,’ she says. ‘We are selling history. We are selling the story.’
That philosophy is visible in the clothes.
Some of the prints used by IK-PEN are hand-drawn, hand-painted and dyed. The fabric begins as what Akwitti describes as a blank canvas before the designs and colours are introduced. Embroidery is also deliberately incorporated into the garments.
Deliberate patterns
One of the influences comes from northern Nigeria, where elaborate hand embroidery has traditionally featured prominently in men’s clothing. IK-PEN adapted the technique for women’s garments, particularly jackets, as a visual expression of strength.
The clothes therefore carry more than decoration.
Akwitti describes the modern African woman for whom she designs as one who knows herself, understands her position and wants clothing that is comfortable, modest and authoritative.
This is perhaps why it does not look like the stereotypical image of African fashion that often reaches international audiences.
No rules require African fashion to mean enormous headpieces, heavily embellished ceremonial gowns, or clothes reserved for weddings and special occasions.
Akwitti argues that much of what the world understands as African fashion has been filtered through ceremonies, red carpets and weddings.
There is another Africa in the everyday.
‘The things you see on TV are things that have been made to look like that,’ she says. ‘If you pick up a piece, you just need to know how to amplify the piece, to give a certain kind of look.’
That, she believes, is one area where Nigerians have become particularly adept: styling.
African fashion does not necessarily need to abandon its cultural identity to become contemporary. It needs to be worn differently, styled differently and, most importantly, worn routinely.
Akwitti’s frustration is that this has not yet happened at the scale it should.
She recalls walking through Paris during summer and barely seeing people wearing African fabrics on the streets. For her, that was disappointing.
Where is African fashion in Africa?
Africa has an abundance of textile traditions such as Adire, Aso-oke, Kente, Dan Fani, and Akwete. The label’s work brings several of these traditions into contemporary silhouettes. This was also part of the reasons it was invited to Uganda International Fashion Week, where Akwitti was among designers from Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and India.
The larger question is why these fabrics remain underrepresented in the global wardrobe.
Akwitti’s answer begins at home.
‘Africans, first of all, [must] embrace what we have, what comes from us,’ she says. ‘We wear Africa, and the world will come to appreciate us.’
It sounds simple, but the problem is more complicated than consumer preference.
Her experience travelling to Kampala exposed another obstacle: the difficulty of doing business across African borders.
Akwitti says even after arriving in Uganda for a legitimate fashion event, she struggled to find straightforward ways of accepting payments from customers. She describes having to rely on a trusted local person to receive payments on her behalf.
For a fashion business, these are not minor inconveniences. They affect whether a designer can enter a market, sell stock, replenish inventory, and build a customer base.
‘If we are going to take our products, our resources, our creativity from Africa to the world, how can we do that when even within Africa we can’t transact?’ she asks.
Beyond fashion
Akwitti wants governments, financial institutions and the private sector to treat fashion as an industry rather than a collection of talented people making beautiful clothes.
Her idea includes platforms, training, grants, investment and policies that make it easier for African businesses to trade with one another.
The ambition is to build an African fashion economy in which a Ugandan woman can buy a Nigerian dress, a Kenyan designer can sell to Ghana, a Ghanaian textile producer can find customers in South Africa, and the money generated circulates within the continent.
There are signs that the industry is moving in that direction.
The business of fashion
Uganda International Fashion Week itself returned this year after a six-year break under the theme ‘Fashion for Impact’, with organisers placing emphasis on fashion as a source of jobs, entrepreneurship, markets and livelihoods. The programme brought together designers from across Africa and India and included a business expo intended to connect creatives with markets and mentors.
Akwitti’s Kampala visit fitted neatly into that bigger conversation. The runway created visibility. The pop-up created a market. The latter may ultimately be more important.
If African fashion is to become more than something Africans admire during fashion weeks, it has to become something they can find, buy, wear and move in them through the streets.
Thus, Akwitti thinks beyond the Kampala runway.
The response at the pop-up, she says, was encouraging. Women asked when IK-PEN would establish a permanent presence in Uganda. She believes that could happen.
The fashion designer wants an African woman preparing for a party, a meeting or an ordinary day to think first about what Africa has produced before looking overseas.
Not because foreign fashion should disappear, but because African fashion should no longer be treated as an occasional costume.
‘We are passionate about taking African fashion to the next level,’ she says.
Perhaps not another runway in Paris, London or Milan.
Probably, it is a Kampala street where a Ugandan woman wears a Nigerian-designed jacket made from an indigenous African textile and nobody finds it unusual.
That, for Akwitti, would mean African fashion has finally stopped being something Africa exports for the world to admire to becoming something Africans themselves routinely wear.