I grew up in Nigeria in the 1990s, when much of what we considered fashionable seemed to come from somewhere else.
Hip-hop culture shaped our music, television and dress. African clothing, by contrast, was often reserved for weddings, church or a school cultural day—then the next morning we returned to Western clothes.
That was the contradiction: these garments represented where we came from, yet we treated them as something to dress up in rather than simply how we dressed.
After leaving the continent, distance made me interrogate identity more deliberately. As I began the process Dr. Kamau Kambon calls re-Afrikanisation, clothing became part of that conversation.
01
What We Wear Matters
There is an economic dimension to clothing that is easy to overlook. Every purchase decides whose creativity, labour and economy our money supports.
If Africans consume only what others design and manufacture, we strengthen economies elsewhere while narrowing the possibilities within our own. Wearing African fashion therefore became more than an aesthetic choice for me; it became an expression of identity and an economic choice.
“That does not mean African design should be frozen in an imagined past. Culture evolves. The question is what contemporary African menswear looks like when it is made for the way we live now.House of ỌNUỌRA
01
What We Wear Matters
There is an economic dimension to clothing that is easy to overlook. Every purchase decides whose creativity, labour and economy our money supports.
If Africans consume only what others design and manufacture, we strengthen economies elsewhere while narrowing the possibilities within our own. Wearing African fashion therefore became more than an aesthetic choice for me; it became an expression of identity and an economic choice.
“That does not mean African design should be frozen in an imagined past. Culture evolves. The question is what contemporary African menswear looks like when it is made for the way we live now.House of ỌNUỌRA
02
Rooted, Without Being Restricted
ỌNUỌRA grew from that question. I wanted modern African clothing with a recognisable sensibility, without a wedding, ceremony or cultural occasion being required to justify it.
It should work in Lagos, London or a New York summer. It should not become costume when it leaves the continent, nor become European in order to feel contemporary.
Our objective is not to make African versions of European clothing. It is to develop a contemporary African design language of our own—refined, cultured and rooted.
For me, that is the new language of African menswear. ỌNUỌRA is our contribution to it.
02
Rooted, Without Being Restricted
ỌNUỌRA grew from that question. I wanted modern African clothing with a recognisable sensibility, without a wedding, ceremony or cultural occasion being required to justify it.
It should work in Lagos, London or a New York summer. It should not become costume when it leaves the continent, nor become European in order to feel contemporary.
Our objective is not to make African versions of European clothing. It is to develop a contemporary African design language of our own—refined, cultured and rooted.
For me, that is the new language of African menswear. ỌNUỌRA is our contribution to it.
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