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DIMEJI ILORI is a Lagos-based Nigerian sustainable fashion brand founded in 2021 by designer Dimeji Ilori. Working across menswear and womenswear, the label brings handwoven textiles, regional craft traditions and contemporary tailoring together in garments conceived as “wearable art”. Its creative world is shaped by pre-colonial African heritage, spirituality, artefacts and lived cultural memory, with fashion treated not simply as decoration but as a medium through which African stories can be preserved, reconsidered and carried into the present.
The result is a brand language that feels grounded without becoming nostalgic. DIMEJI ILORI does not attempt to reproduce historical dress literally. Instead, it draws on the knowledge embedded in fabrics, objects, and craft processes, then translates those references into modern jackets, fluid separates, sculptural forms, and relaxed wardrobe pieces. The label’s official positioning emphasises the fusion of heritage and modernity, while its public collections move easily between familiar clothing categories and more experimental runway expressions.
Dimeji Ilori was born and raised in Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State in north-central Nigeria. He has described the city as a meeting point of cultures, social groups and ways of living. Traditional weavers and pottery makers working within older family compounds existed alongside newer commercial buildings, technology centres and expanding urban life. Those contrasts would later become central to his fashion practice.
Ilori studied physics at the University of Ilorin before entering the fashion industry. Although his academic training was in a different discipline, it provided a background in observation, experimentation, and the behaviour of materials. His subsequent work reveals a similar curiosity: fabrics are folded, layered, reconstructed and combined with unexpected natural or crafted components to discover what they can become.
The designer has said that his approach emerged naturally from his environment. Handwoven aso-oke, for example, is not introduced as an exotic surface decoration. It forms part of the cultural and material landscape in which he grew up. By placing the textile within contemporary tailoring and updated silhouettes, he connects personal memory with the needs of a modern wardrobe.
That connection between source and reinterpretation is fundamental to the brand. Research often takes Ilori beyond the studio and into the communities where particular materials and techniques are practised. He has spoken about travelling to meet artisans directly, learning from their knowledge and bringing those conversations back into the design and construction process. For Ilori, cultural authenticity begins with understanding where a craft comes from and engaging with the people who sustain it.
Although the present DIMEJI ILORI label identifies 2021 as its launch year, the designer’s earlier work under names including Swish and Kijipa Studio provides valuable context for the ideas that now define the brand.
Swish by Dimeji Ilori was among 11 emerging labels selected from more than 300 applicants for Eko Fashion in Lagos in 2021. Organised by the Lagos State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture with EbonyLife Place, the event offered young clothing and accessories businesses a prominent local platform. Swish appeared alongside designers including Hertunba, Bankole Thomas, Henri Uduku and Vicnate.
It was through Swish that Ilori’s Afrowaste project received wider attention. Presented as a response to discarded clothing, the project used vintage garments and pieces sourced from thrift shops, flea markets and potential waste streams. Rather than disguising their previous existence, Ilori used reconstruction and fabric manipulation to create new relationships between materials. Linen, polyester and second-hand Western garments could appear alongside Swiss lace, embroidery or vintage handwoven aso-oke from Ilorin.
Kijipa Studio subsequently provided another outlet for Ilori’s interest in historical storytelling. Its Spring/Summer 2022 project, Ajala Travel, drew inspiration from Moshood Adisa Olabisi Ajala, the Nigerian traveller and journalist popularly remembered as “Ajala Travel”. The collection used his international journeys to question whose explorers are preserved in popular history and whose achievements are allowed to fade from public memory.
Rather than using Ajala merely as a visual reference, Kijipa Studio approached his life as a story about possibility, movement and African self-representation. The project demonstrated an instinct that remains visible in DIMEJI ILORI today: a collection can function as clothing while also prompting its audience to look again at a person, tradition, or episode that deserves renewed attention.
Afrowaste remains one of the clearest expressions of Ilori’s approach to sustainability. Its principle is relatively direct: existing garments and discarded materials can be treated as creative resources rather than as objects that have reached the end of their useful lives.
Ilori’s stated ambition was not to produce large quantities of identical clothing. He instead described transforming a greater volume of unwanted shirts into a smaller number of carefully made garments. Because the source materials cannot always be obtained again, limited production becomes a practical consequence of the process as well as an aesthetic decision.
This method gives each piece an individual material history. Garments may incorporate altered details, cut-outs, bleaching, reconstructed panels, contrasting fabrics or additions drawn from Nigerian dress traditions. The meeting of second-hand international clothing with locally recognised textiles also reflects the visual reality of contemporary Nigerian cities, where imported garments, local tailoring, ceremonial fabrics and global sportswear routinely occupy the same streets.
Afrowaste therefore extends beyond recycling as a technical exercise. It is a way of examining cultural exchange through material. Something overlooked or discarded is brought into conversation with aso-oke, embroidery or lace and given a new identity through design. Africa Fashion Week London has since identified this transformation of deadstock and discarded garments into one-of-a-kind pieces as a defining aspect of the label’s sustainable practice.
DIMEJI ILORI’s work depends on a network of specialised makers rather than a single textile or production tradition. Ilori has identified collaborations with artisans in Ilorin, Osogbo, Kano, Benin and Lagos. Ilorin and Osogbo are associated within the brand’s practice with aso-oke weaving, while Kano contributes raffia expertise and Benin contributes traditions of bronze casting. Lagos brings together craftspeople working across different stages of development and garment construction.
This distributed model allows the brand to work with knowledge rooted in particular places. A woven textile, raffia component or cast-metal element enters the garment with its own process and cultural context. The designer’s role is not simply to collect those elements but to create a coherent contemporary form around them.
Aso-oke is especially important. Traditionally woven in narrow strips and associated with Yoruba dress and ceremonial life, it gives the brand a direct connection to the weaving culture Ilori encountered while growing up. In his collections, the textile may become the main body of a piece or appear more selectively through panels, collars, trims and structural details.
Raffia offers a different vocabulary. Its texture, movement and natural irregularity contrast with the precision of tailored cloth. Bronze, meanwhile, gives closures and ornamental components a sculptural presence. By bringing these practices into the same garment, DIMEJI ILORI creates clothing in which tailoring and handcraft remain visibly connected.
Ilori has described artisans as the backbone of the brand. That statement is significant because the label’s identity cannot be separated from the people who weave, shape, cast and construct its materials. Craftsmanship is not an embellishment added after the design is completed; it is one of the conditions from which the design begins.
The Asotuntun project represents the brand’s clearest documented example of material innovation. Developed as a reinterpretation of Yoruba aso-oke, the project substitutes more conventional fibres with bamboo-based yarns. According to Ilori, the resulting textile is lighter, silkier and more fluid than heavier forms of the traditional cloth.
The significance of Asotuntun lies in its balance between continuity and adaptation. The intention is not to remove aso-oke from its cultural foundation, but to explore how weaving knowledge can respond to different weights, textures and contemporary uses. A textile historically associated with substantial ceremonial garments can consequently be considered for softer and more versatile forms.
This approach illustrates Ilori’s view that preservation and evolution are not opposing choices. A craft can retain its identity while makers and designers explore new fibres, finishes and applications. Within DIMEJI ILORI, innovation becomes a means of keeping heritage active rather than placing it beyond change.
DIMEJI ILORI’s visibility expanded through Lagos Fashion Week, one of the continent’s leading fashion platforms. The brand appeared in the Green Access presentation during Lagos Fashion Week 2024, placing it among a group of emerging designers selected for the event’s sustainability-focused runway.
The following year, Ilori presented Natural Synthesis during Lagos Fashion Week’s 2025 edition, held under the broader theme In Full Bloom. The collection was described as a fusion of traditional Nigerian craftsmanship and modern design, informed by the Zaria Art Society’s philosophy of cultural hybridisation.
That reference is well suited to Ilori’s work. The Zaria Art Society, formed by Nigerian artists around the period of independence, became associated with the idea of “natural synthesis”: drawing from indigenous artistic traditions while engaging with modern forms and training. In Ilori’s collection, a comparable dialogue emerged through handwoven cloth, raffia, structured tailoring, colour and experimental silhouettes.
The presentation demonstrated how the brand’s research could translate into a complete runway statement. Heritage was neither isolated in the past nor absorbed anonymously into a generic international look. It remained recognisable, but it was given new proportions, combinations and contexts.
DIMEJI ILORI’s association with Lagos Fashion Week also places the label within a wider movement promoting circularity, local craftsmanship and more responsible production. In 2025, Lagos Fashion Week itself received the Earthshot Prize in the “Build a Waste-Free World” category. The award belonged to the fashion-week organisation rather than to any individual participating designer, but it recognised an ecosystem in which sustainability standards, skills programmes and craft-led innovation have become increasingly prominent.
The brand’s international development continued with its selection for the British Council’s Creative DNA programme in 2026. Creative DNA is an accelerator for emerging African fashion designers, providing structured learning, business development, market access and opportunities for engagement with fashion-sector networks. Since beginning in Kenya in 2020, the programme has expanded across several African countries and supported more than 200 designers and fashion entrepreneurs.
Through the 2026 programme, DIMEJI ILORI was selected for Africa Fashion Week London. The event’s profile of the brand highlights its combination of craftsmanship, cultural storytelling, sustainability and the transformation of deadstock materials into individual fashion pieces. As of July 2026, the brand is scheduled to participate in the forthcoming AFWL 2026 programme as part of the Creative DNA group.
The selection gives the label a route into conversations with international audiences while retaining the specificity of its Nigerian foundation. Rather than adapting the work into a placeless version of luxury, DIMEJI ILORI’s global proposition rests on the depth of its local references.
Ilori describes the brand’s audience as the “Afro-urban” community: people who participate in an international, contemporary lifestyle while remaining interested in cultural identity, craftsmanship and heritage.
This audience helps explain the breadth of the brand’s product language. The official store includes casual pieces such as oversized T-shirts and polo shirts alongside fringe trousers, lapel jackets and more expressive outerwear, including the Chillz and Flakey Petal designs. The offer is therefore not confined to ceremonial fashion or runway experimentation. It attempts to build a wardrobe in which cultural references can be present at different levels of dress.
The label’s Lagos Fashion Week profile categorises it as androgynous, encompassing both menswear and womenswear. This flexibility is visible in its use of jackets, layered pieces, elongated forms and adaptable separates. Instead of defining heritage through a single gendered silhouette, the brand allows textile, construction, and story to serve as the connecting elements across its collections.
DIMEJI ILORI belongs to a generation of African brands demonstrating that cultural specificity and contemporary ambition can strengthen one another. Its work begins with Nigerian histories and materials, but it is not closed to experimentation. Discarded clothing is reconstructed. Aso-oke is reconsidered through bamboo-based yarn. Raffia and bronze enter contemporary tailoring. Historical figures serve as starting points for new collections.
What gives the brand coherence is not a single fabric or silhouette, but its belief that clothing can carry knowledge. A garment can preserve a technique, acknowledge a community of makers, recover an overlooked story or invite its wearer to consider heritage differently.
Ilori has spoken of wanting the label to become a cultural ambassador for Nigeria and to encourage pride and cultural consciousness among Africans around the world. That ambition is already visible in the brand’s progression from local showcases and reconstruction projects to Lagos Fashion Week, Creative DNA and Africa Fashion Week London.
DIMEJI ILORI’s evolving contribution to fashion lies in its ability to make heritage feel active. Its collections do not present culture as a fixed archive accessible only through museums or ceremonial occasions. They place it on the body woven, tailored, reconstructed and ready to move through contemporary life.
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Design Indaba. (2021, May 7). With Afrowaste, Nigerian designer Dimeji Ilori turns discarded clothes into one-of-a-kind treasures.
DIMEJI ILORI. (n.d.). Dimejiilori store.
The Earthshot Prize. (2025). Lagos Fashion Week: 2025 winner, Build a Waste-Free World.
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Lagos Fashion Week. (2024). Green Access: Dimeji Ilori.
Modaculture. (2022, January 26). Kijipa Studio’s Spring/Summer 2022 collection “Ajala Travel” explores the “fantasy on transnationalism”.
NOT JUST A LABEL. (n.d.). DIMEJI ILORI designer brand and collections.
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