Art direction — Zalando — Directed by Timi Akindele-Ajani
Bubu Ogisi doesn't call it fashion, she calls it wearable art. We traveled to Nigeria to witness IAMISIGO craft upclose. The winner of the Zalando Visionary Award 2025.
Bubu Ogisi calls it "finding the map to divine mystery systems" and anyone who had the privilege to experience one of her presentations would likely agree. IAMISIGO, her Lagos-founded slow design house, works across West Africa sourcing ancestral techniques that the fashion industry mostly forgot: batik, natural dyeing, glass blowing, sisal weaving, brass forging, recycled plastic turned to bead turned to wearable object. We traveled to Lagos to film her in her studio, with her artisans, in the city that made everything the brand is. We documented what it looks like when fashion is preservation (of technique, of stories, of ancestral knowledge, of ecosystems and nature), and the village-like effort it takes to create such high quality handmade clothes and accessories. I'm so thankful she won the 2025 Zalando Visionary Award as this was one of my favourite projects of all time and I got to know Bubu and call her a friend.
The collection was called Dual Mandate — Lord Lugard's colonial text, flipped. "What if duality could be sacred, not violent?" The show space was built inside Fabrikken (an old industrial washing room) and the runaway was a maze with an inner and an outer circle. The models started walking in the outer circle which had gravel on the floor, so the guests seated in the inner circle would hear the models before they saw anyone, the sound of footsteps as announcement. "It's not about spectacle. It's about energetic alignment." We produced Zalando's first-ever hosted livestream from the runway, with an immersive floating camera that walked the maze alongside the models. The diversity on that runway, the political and spiritual weight, the level of craft: "if you come open," she said, "the collection will speak to you." It did. IAMISIGO arrival in Copenhagen was a wave impossible to ignore and it was an honour to help make it happen.