Hey Starlights, it’s fashion week YAY! Welcome to another edition of Realness Corner with me, Fola Francis.
This is the favourite time of the year for the fashion kids in Nigeria, because it’s the only time we can go all out and wild on the street style.
Lagos fashion week day one commenced on Thursday the 25th of Oct 2018, at another venue in Oniru VI. We’re just praying they stick to one venue in the long run, because we’re tired of having to locate their new venues every year.
I arrived at the street style around 5:30pm, even though the schedule said the shows would start by 4pm. Who are they deceiving? Because the show didn’t start until 9pm. Let’s not even get into that yet, let me first of all talk about my outfit.
I was wearing a Daviva print bomber jacket from my clothing line “Fola Francis” paired with a fully sequinned pants from “Laurel Maris”, and a pair of Swarovski shoes from “Next”. (Yas I was dazzling Hunnay), but my safety pin hair art was the star of my entire outfit. I went with the quote “go big or go home”. You can imagine the amount of attention I got for the look. Enough about me.
The fashion cool kids didn’t come out to play at all, like I anticipated there were lot of durags, co-ord sets, snake prints, Dad sneakers, and pop of colours.
The show literally started 5 whooping hours late, a new standard for African time.
The first show was a collection named DEW by Betty Irabor for mental health awareness. The collection featured bunch of top designers, like Mai Atafo, Style Temple, Ejiro Amos Tarifi, DZYN, Toju Foyeh, amongst others. The show was spectacular, the pieces were all couture, high fashion and quintessential. I don’t have one bad comment about it.
Another show I loved was the Lagos Space Programme. Apart from the track they used while showing which almost made me sick and numb, the pieces were all the way up. I totally see myself rocking the entire collection. The pieces were laid back, woke, at the same time high fashioned. I loved the jackets, the wide pants, the overall, even the wrap skirt thingy on the male models.
Another designer who made a statement for me was “Nack”. His pieces were unexpected, which was good. I loved the infusion of the Nigerian culture and attire with urban fashion, I loved the prints, the cuts, the shirts with attached fannies, the jacket and cap embellished with cowries, loved the Jerseys, even the black two piece with exaggerated belts. The collection was 100% for the culture.
My ultimate favourite of the night was “Fruché”. OMG! I was in love with how feminine the entire collection was, I was in love with the Edo/Benin presence, I was in love with how he bought all the trend into the collection, from polka dots, to exaggerated sleeves, feathers, stripes, pastel, Metallic Aso oke in Rusty orange, Violet, and burgundy. But the piece that stood out the most for me, was the fully hand beaded dress, with feather detailing on the lower part, it was gorgeous. The entire collection was a dream.
There were several other shows, but I couldn’t wait any longer because I was famished and it was already 10:30pm. They really need to do better with their timing, the world is watching and taking notes.
Till tomorrow when I bring you another tea on the day two of LAGOS FASHION WEEK 2018, Ciao.
