The African Fashion Futures Incubator, initiated by the Impact Fund For African Creatives (IFFAC) in collaboration with the African Fashion Foundation in Ghana and Seedstars, an implementing partner, is gearing up for its first run.
The partners have announced their first cohort of 14 African fashion designers to join the African Fashion Futures Incubator. The selected designers joining the program will receive grant financing and training and the incubator looks to equip new, up-and-coming fashion start-ups with the necessary skills and resources to create brands founded on ethical principles regarding people, place, and profit.
According to the Project Director of the African Fashion Foundation, Onyinye Fafi Obi,
“The incubator aims to encourage peer learning and cultural exchange among its participants as well as to future-proof them and instill excellent operational and business foundations to ensure growth. The program also seeks to produce sustainable and financially viable enterprises. while honing the business capabilities of fashion designers.”
Onyinye Fafi Obi
Check out the first cohort of 14 selected African fashion designers to join the incubator.
AJABENG
Travis Obeng-Casper is a fashion designer and Creative Director of AJABENG, a Ghanaian unisex brand birthed at the intersection of minimalism and contemporary African art and culture. He started his fashion brand in 2018 while still in fashion school. Travis holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion Design from Radford University.
Abiola Olusola
Abiola Adeniran-Olusola is a Nigerian fashion designer born in Ibadan. She launched her own contemporary women’s fashion house with a distinct fusion of structural cuts, sleek architecture, African cultures, and craftsmanship in 2017. Abiola draws inspiration from films, music, nature, vintage photographs, and African mythology. She graduated from the University of Lagos in 2010 and then from Istituto Marangoni, Paris, in 2015 where she studied fashion design. While at Marangoni, she interned at Givenchy and Lanvin.
Cynthia Abila
Cynthia Otiyo – Abila started the Cynthia Abila fashion brand in 2016. The women’s brand seeks to make apparel for all shapes and sizes and to celebrate womanhood, culture, and sustainable craft. Each Cynthia Abila design tells an African story.
Jermaine Bleu
Jason Jermaine Asiedu is the founder of Jermaine Bleu which was founded in 2015, the fashion brand is a unisex ready-to-wear brand that embodies style and quality made in Ghana garments. Each piece by Jermaine Bleu tells the African story through bold colors, unique patterns, and more.
Pepper Row
Pepper Row was founded in 2018 by Omafume Niemogha in Lagos, Nigeria. The Sustainable fashion brand is all about using fashion as a positive tool for social and environmental change, whilst exploring, promoting, and preserving the culture and age-old traditional craftsmanship of hand weaving and dying textiles, wood carving, and hand painting. Pepper Row is well known for creating bold, unique, and colorful pieces of arrays.
Anku
Kelvin Vincent is a fashion designer at Anku studios and is an internationally published fashion stylist. The Ghanaian fashion brand is a sustainable conscious brand that uses local hand dye to manipulate materials. They create artistically wearable and colorful pieces by drawing inspiration from nature. Kelvin not only has good eyes for putting clothes and accessories together but also has a unique eye for detailing, significant industry experience, design, and creative direction.
Oríré
Oríré is a Nigerian contemporary fashion brand based in Lagos which is owned by Orire Aleshinloye. The fashion brand is committed to exploring artistic femininity through distinct artisanal craftsmanship and conscious production. Aleshinloye holds a Master’s in Fashion Business Creation from The British School of Fashion in London.
PALMWINE IceCREAM
Kusi Kubi is the creative director of the fashion brand PALMWINE Ice CREAM based in Accra, Ghana. The fashion brand is a gender-skewed Ghanaian fashion label that is big on sustainability. The brand incorporates cut-out tailoring, patched-together leather pants, asymmetric tops, and pelmet skirts. Signature flourishes of gold are seen throughout the brand’s line-up, in chainmail tops or eyelets hammered into hems. Kubi’s journey in the fashion industry began in a central London hotel soirée where he met his first mentor (fashion director, at Plastique)
TABOU
Formerly called DIA by Sarah Elizabeth, Nadia Eman Ibrahim decided to rebrand from a bespoke brand to a sustainable ready-to-wear brand. Tabou is all about sustainability, from creating designs that have little to zero waste to using second-hand fabrics and clothes to create new designs. The fashion brand is well known for its playful and comfortable ready-to-wear party and resort wear.
VicNate
Victor Anate is a young Nigerian fashion designer who currently designs and manages the contemporary fashion brand vicnate. VicNate celebrates youth and femininity in a way that bridges the gap between luxury and contemporary fashion. The brand is known for its classical details like the whimsical bows, décolletage, and structured easiness that are all explored in exciting jewel tones and black.
Amike
Aline Mukamusoni is an actress, creative writer, fashion designer, and founder of AM!KE. AM!KE is a Rwanda-based fashion brand focusing on handcrafted accessories and garments. The production process specializes in handcraft techniques from different African cultures, aesthetics and notable figures from ancient Africa, and tales from the continent, especially Rwanda. The brand draws inspiration from poetry, nature, and culture. Aline’s mission is to use her art to inspire, employ, and uplift Rwandan women of all ages.
Maliko
Ebuka Omaliko is the Founder and Creative Director behind the artisanal luxury footwear & accessory brand Maliko. His fashion journey began in 2012 as an intern at the Lagos Fashion Week which ignited a strong interest in fashion and paved the way for the vision of the brand Maliko. Ebuka won the 2018 Green Access Competition of the Lagos Fashion Week and was selected as a beneficiary of the 2021 Young Designers Sustainable Project by the African Fashion Foundation. He draws inspiration from childhood memories, interactions with people, history, and culture.
Atto Tetteh
Atto Tetteh was founded in 2014 by George Tetteh. The Ghanaian luxury fashion brand is known globally for its visual expression of African stories through sophisticated and trendy clothes with color, warmth, energy, and sartorial elegance as their description of fashion sense, ATTO TETTEH believes Africa has a story yet to be told.
Larry Jay
Larry Jay by Jafaru Larry is a unisex Ghanaian brand that has a unique and timeless personality and lives in a clean, diverse, and progressive world. Their designs exude an understated style and emphasize “tradition and comfort” with details and innovations that echo our west African heritage.
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Thelma Quainoo is my name, and my pen name is Miss Anowaa. My zodiac sign is Aries, and that alone will tell you I am a bubbly soul. A writer and an aspiring public relations practitioner. Find me on IG as @miss_anowaa. #beyouloveyou