Lagos Fashion Week | Nigeria, Africa

Origins and Founder

Before launching LagosFW, Akerele had already been staging periodic runway shows in Lagos for around three years, watching the city evolve into a genuine hub for new design talent. She founded the event not simply to increase exposure for local designers, but to give them a longer-term framework for building sustainable businesses. As she put it in an early interview with Vogue, the Lagos fashion scene at the time was one where passion was the only real requirement for entry. Akerele has since become one of the most recognized figures in African fashion, named a 2025 Climate Fellow by Yale University for her work integrating sustainability into the textile and apparel sectors.

Growth Into Africa’s Largest Fashion Week

LagosFW now showcases more than 60 Nigerian and African designers each season to audiences that have topped 40,000 retailers, media and consumers on-site, alongside a claimed digital reach of roughly 490 million and millions of social interactions, according to figures the event has reported to the United Nations’ SDG partnership platform. Designers who built their international profile partly through LagosFW’s runway include Kenneth Ize, Orange Culture, Mowalola, Lisa Folawiyo and Christie Brown, several of whom have gone on to show at major international fashion weeks or dress globally recognized celebrities.

International Recognition and Media Coverage

Few African fashion events have drawn the level of sustained international press attention that LagosFW now attracts. CNN’s coverage of the event examined how, in a conservative country with high levels of anti-LGBTQ discrimination, LagosFW has become an unusually inclusive space, with Nigerian label Orange Culture using its runway for more than a decade to challenge gender norms in fashion. In 2022, runway footage from LagosFW was featured in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s major “Africa Fashion” exhibition in London, with Akerele giving the exhibition’s keynote address and advising its curatorial team. The event’s profile reached a new high in 2025, when the Earthshot Prize — the global environmental award founded by Prince William — named LagosFW a category winner for “Build a Waste-free World,” citing its requirement that every designer showing at the event demonstrate sustainable sourcing and production practices. LagosFW has also become a launching pad for individual Nigerian designers reaching the very top of global fashion media: in 2024, designers Tolu Coker, Priya Ahluwalia and Torishéju Dumi appeared together on the cover of British Vogue, a milestone widely covered across Nigerian and international fashion press as a symbol of the industry LagosFW helped build.

Sustainability and the Green Access Programme

Sustainability sits at the center of LagosFW’s identity, not as a side theme but as a condition of participation. Its Green Access programme, launched in 2018, is a fashion accelerator that trains young designers in resource efficiency, biodegradability and recyclability, while its Woven Threads initiative, launched during the pandemic, spotlights African design principles rooted in circularity. In 2021, Akerele was named Zero Oil Ambassador for Nigeria by the Nigerian Export Promotion Council and given a grant to support thirty Nigerian fashion brands, further embedding sustainable production into the industry LagosFW represents.

Next Edition

LagosFW runs on a biannual rhythm, with its most recent edition marking 15 years of the platform in October–November 2025. Exact dates for the next edition had not yet been announced at the time of writing; details are published through the event’s official channels as each season approaches.

Explore More Fashion Weeks

• Nigeria Fashion Week
• Africa Fashion Week Nigeria
• ARISE Fashion Week
• Fashion Weeks Africa Directory

Lagos Fashion Week
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