Lagos
Fashion Week

Lagos Fashion Week was founded in 2011 by Omoyemi Akerele, who also founded the fashion business development agency that produces it, Style House Files. The inaugural edition featured more than 40 designers; the week has since grown into what is widely described as Africa’s largest clothing trade show, showcasing over 60 Nigerian and African designers to a global audience of more than 40,000 retailers, media and consumers each season.

From its first edition, the week has run the Fashion Focus Fund, an annual competition and development program for emerging designers, reflecting an emphasis on industry infrastructure — mentorship, funding and production support — alongside the runway program itself.

The platform has helped propel a number of designers to international recognition, including Orange Culture, Lisa Folawiyo and Christie Brown — labels that built early visibility on the Lagos schedule before expanding into international retail and press coverage.

The week’s standing within the wider fashion and museum world has grown alongside its commercial scale. Akerele joined the advisory committee for MoMA’s "Items: Is Fashion Modern?" exhibition in 2017, and runway footage from Lagos Fashion Week was included in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s major 2022 exhibition "Africa Fashion." During the COVID-19 disruption of 2020, Akerele launched the Woven Threads initiative to promote a circular fashion economy among participating designers, and in 2021 she was appointed Zero Oil Ambassador for Nigeria alongside a 500 million naira grant she secured to support 30 Nigerian fashion brands.