A Fashion Capital in the Making

Abuja is quickly asserting itself in the fashion world, reports Ladi Opaluwa

Anyone driving into Ascon petrol station on Adetokunbo Ademola Crescent in Wuse II may not expect to find a fashion designer’s workshop within its premises, but O’Godor Republic is there behind the pumps. Inside, the shop is in a flux: scraps of fabric lie around, unfinished dresses hang on mannequins, handbags are on display on the wall, piles of look-books are on the table and various publicity fliers abound.

Ifeoma Anyanwu of Fashion Label O'Godor Republic

Ifeoma Anyanwu is O’Godor Republic’s Creative Director and generally acknowledged as the pioneer fashion designer in Abuja, having launched her label in 2003. (Dakova is often mentioned in the same sentence but he made his fortune in Lagos before relocating to the capital). Fashion in Abuja has a history that spans only a decade, and prior to that, ‘Abuja fashion’ might have been an oxymoron.

“The city was critically under-populated [10 years ago], and that was a problem,” says Anyanwu, who has become so synonymous with her label that she is popularly known as O’Godor. Over the years, compulsory and compulsive migration has led to a growth in the population, and as more celebrities relocate from Lagos to Abuja and event organisers see a market for their concerts, award shows and film premieres, the balance has tipped in favour of fashion and designers are opening up shop in the capital to meet the demand for red-carpet stylists.

Prominent designers like House of Farrah, run by its Creative Director Fatima Aliyu Garba, and Ms Makor by Anita Adebisi feature alongside many upcoming designers making waves in the city. But the transformation in the couture sector is still new, and the emergence of fashion events even more so.

There were no major fashion shows in the city until 2009 when Runway started, broadening the market for models, designers, photographers, and other players in the industry. Then the first edition of the Muslim Identity Fashion Show, which promotes conservative dressing among Muslim women, was in 2010. That same year, the first edition of the Makeup Fair organised by Pop Concept was launched, creating a platform for manufacturers and retailers of beauty products to showcase their work.

Next came Trendy Couture in 2011, which seeks to give designers a platform to showcase their pieces. ECOWAS Fashion Week, which celebrates African designers, will launch next year, and exhibitions like the first annual Montage Africa Fashion and Beauty Expo, the Wedding Expo and The Business of Fashion conference are other notable additions to the Abuja fashion calendar.

Yet Henry Nwaeze of photography outfit Big H Studios doesn’t believe that the various components of the fashion industry are progressing at the same pace. Like Simi Vijay and Aisha Augie-Kuta, Big H is beginning to gain popularity in the capital’s fashion photography industry. He has been in the business for only a year but has seen it all through the lens of his camera, and the view does not impress him. He believes that the fashion industry – especially as it pertains to photography – remains underdeveloped.

An International Business graduate of University of East London, Nwaeze still holds a day job at an engineering firm because photography doesn’t pay all the bills. “You will hardly find anyone in Abuja who is exclusively a fashion photographer,” he says. “The market isn’t as big yet.” He has spread himself across different genres of photography, and fashion isn’t the highest paying among them. “I make as much from covering a wedding as I do from three photo shoots.”

Nwaeze developed a love for photography by taking self-portraits with his phone camera, before officially turning his narcissism into a business in 2012. But he is hard on himself and his colleagues: “We have not done anything deserving of the admiration of professionals from outside Abuja,” he said. For this reason, he collaborates regularly with stylists and models to create works that may not be financially rewarding but which will hopefully command the attention they need. “It is only in Abuja you will find a model working for eight years who still has a slim portfolio,” he says.

Building Structure

A model with ambitions of strutting the runway would have found Abuja to be most unfruitful before 2009, as it was the norm for designers and event organisers to bring in models from Lagos even though this costs more than using local talent. This may be because they didn’t have confidence in the models, but there was also no formal structure to engage them.

Godfrey Ibeakanma of GI Modeling Agency

Godfrey Ibeakama (who does fashion styling for this magazine) is a fashion insider who started out as a model but now runs GI Modeling Agency. He says that he went into the business because there were models all over who needed grooming and representation and an industry that needed more structure. He started the agency in 2010, and now has 60 models under his management.

Abuja, he says, presents its own unique challenges for his line of business. Scouting for models in a relatively conservative culture can be tricky as young people are inhibited by parental control, and it is hard to convince potential catwalk stars to agree to modeling as a career path.



 

Ibeakama is also a stylist and has worked with Banky W. and Eugenia Abu amongst others. In the beginning, according to him, clients were unwilling to pay for beauty services. “But people are beginning to realise the need to employ a professional stylist,” he says. It is this realisation that has made it possible for the young and talented Richard Akuson, CEO of VHC Styling to make a living out of his passion.

O’Godor is optimistic about the city’s fashion industry. “Fashion in Abuja is ready for the international market,” she says. “The only edge Lagos has over Abuja is the population, and they also have media coverage that creates the hype around their activities. The magazines are not here to feature our pieces regularly and the headquarters of most media organisations are in Lagos.”

The Future



 15 year old Onanma Okeke of Jess Stephanie

Onanma Okeke

is an Abuja-based designer behind the label Jess Stefanie. She exhibited her designs at the 2013 Lagos Fashion and Design Week and at two consecutive Runway shows, and her pieces appeared in the 2012 Vanity Fair Italian issue. She plans to hold her first exhibition in November 2014, yet she is only 15.

The SS3 student of Premier International School, Wuse was fully-made in Abuja. She honed her skills at the Flair Fashion Academy in Zone 4, and she hopes to acquire further training at the Parson New School of Design in New York after her university degree. Okeke is the voice of the new evolving fashion industry in the capital, and a sign of things to come. “My brand is young,” she says, “and Abuja fashion is developing, so we will grow together.”