Culture
What the crowd outside fashion week is really wearing
The best looks in Lagos never made it past the venue doors. Our photographers were outside.
by Nadia Mensah
By the second day of Lagos Fashion Week, our photographers had stopped bothering to go inside the Eko Convention Centre between shows. Everything worth shooting was happening on the steps outside, where guests, buyers and the merely well-dressed spent as much time posing for each other as they did watching the runway.
The trends repeating across the crowd told their own story: oversized tailored blazers worn open over wrapper skirts, agbada reworked in cropped, structured silhouettes rather than the traditional flowing cut, and gele tied smaller and asymmetric instead of the tall formal wraps seen at weddings. Chunky leather loafers, several clearly bespoke, replaced the heels that dominated street style two seasons ago. Sunglasses stayed on indoors and out, regardless of the hour.
"Honestly, I dressed for the pavement, not the seats," said Amaka Chukwu, a 26-year-old stylist photographed in a cropped agbada jacket over wide trousers. "Everybody knows the real audience is out here. If I'm going to be in eleven photos today, they're not going to be from inside a dark tent."
Designers have started to notice. Several told us they now factor the outdoor crowd into their own front-row seating decisions, treating the steps outside as an extension of the show rather than a sideshow to it.
