Created in June 2017 by journalist Emmanuelle Courreges, LAGO54 celebrates African fashion avant-garde and proposes and upholds a cutting edge selection of designers – in fashion, lifestyle and design, among the best on the continent.
LAGO54 is, at the same time, an eshop and the sole European agency of representation, exclusively dedicated to the most beautiful African brands.
Journalist for 20 years for the women’s press and other magazines, Emmanuelle Courreges spent her first 20 years in West Africa. As a journalist, she never stopped writing about African creation, bringing to light the talents spotted in the continent’s fashion weeks.
Committed to the idea of defending a certain vision of fashion and brands that draw on their cultural heritage and to expose only designers whose process of creation and manufacture meet international standards, she is the ambassador of this young creative scene.
It is this new scene of fashion and design, effervescent and daring, that WHO’S NEXT – FAME is welcoming this year 24 designers from 10 countries among South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal or Cameroun, with a selection that summons the best of fashion, but also of lifestyle, beauty and design.
LAGO54 X WHO’S NEXT – FAME is the first high-end concept store in Africa that mixes haute-couture, young labels, design, fun products and original crafts.
Batiks and dyes from Ghana, indigos from Mali, weavings from Burkina Faso : giving a fashion twist to West African textile prints and techniques, while preserving know-how and creating workshops that are as expert as they are sustainable : this is the ambition of this label that has just won the famous American CFDA + Lexus Fashion Award.
In South Africa, each of his fashion show is an event. Considered as the «little prince of prints», this Thai designer who has always been living in Cape Town, revisits the immense eclecticism of African cultures, marrying like no one else materials, colours and geometrical designs.
The blend of denim, traditional dyes and aso-oke, a weaving from Nigeria, became its signature. With its play of pleats and destructuration, this young Nigerian label, which regularly dresses the star of letters Chimamanda Adichie, offers a hyper-contemporary silhouette, in which indigo blue and white dominate.
Designated in January 2017 as one of the fashion designers to follow by the French ELLE, his luxury ready-to-wear celebrates the black continent’s textile heritage, the kente, the Faso dan Fani, the Mandjak, the crackings, with unique pieces and dresses borrowing their codes from haute-couture.
Her taste for daring cuts, ultra-structured pieces and mix of organic materials drawned from Ivorian heritage — which Beyoncé and Solange Knowles love — , tell much more than a fashion fusion between the North and the South, the traditions and the future and testify to an aesthetic that intends to shake the retinas and codes.
Pleats, ribbons, origami effects, sensational materials : inspired by the architecture and legends of Nigeria, Uju Offiah draws silhouettes as feminine as sculptural.
A young label which proves that traditional know-how, such as Korogho’s weaves or Grand Bassam’s bronzes, mixed with urban materials and styles, can composed looks as modern as seductive
Minimalist shapes, strong pieces, textile experiments : Esmod Paris ex-student, inspired by African myths as much as by architectural and textured aspect of a fabric, tries, at each new collection, to convince women that the message conveyed by a garment is more important than its mere aesthetic.
Inspired by the patterns of traditional Zulu sandals (the izimbadada), this shoe brand whose name means «skin» in Xhosa, infuses a hyper graphical aesthetic to the look of urban nomads. Local sourcing, hand-made – Ethics is here combined with aesthetics.
It has already seduced the most beautiful shops like Anthropologie or United Arrows, in Tokyo. These colourful raffia bags give to Bolgatanga’s art of basketry a fashion twist that wins every vote.
Fantasy, impertinence, diversion, culture: this is the DNA of this T-shirts and sweatshirts brand which infuses an «afro» twist to the world’s pop culture.
This high-end leather goods label, made with the collaboration of a group of Maasai women, combines ethics and aesthetic. Recycled materials, sustainable links, enhancement and sustainability of know-how: these bags lend a great modernity to Kenyan traditions.
Based in London since 2013, the designer returns to the source of her Ivorian heritage, with a series of solar jewels in tune with the times, inspired by the great classics of traditional African jewellery. In 2018, the entire French press, from Vogue to ELLE, celebrated her creations.
With her Mandjaques weavers, this former student of the Applied Arts School Duperré not only works to perpetuate a textile tradition with very elaborate patterns, but also to infuse a rare modernity. A sophisticated creativity is found in cushions, bags and fabrics for the home. And in prestigious collaborations.
In 2016, Vogue Italia defined her as one of the 10 best jewellery designers to follow. Since 2015, collection after collection, the young South African Katherine-May Pichulik offers audacious and strong, vibrant and singular pieces, inspired by African cultures.
Fascinated by tactile and sensory experiments, such as the mixing of wood and ceramics or wool, the young designer Candice Lawrence creates ultra-flexible necklace lamps, reminiscent of the jewellery worn by the Maasai. Sustainable, recycled and local materials give body to her fantasy and taste for the African heritage
Inspired by the cultural and artistic heritage of several countries in West Africa, Senegal, Congo and Ivory Coast, the tableware designed by this graduate of Central Saint Martins has a singular chic. Designed in Dakar but made in one of the best manufactures of Limoges, these collections dress up refined tables and allow playful interactions with their patterns
Inspired by her native Yoruba culture, the traditional adire dyes, the wax and the West African brutalism, this textile designer wants to bring African luxury into the world’s interiors. These continental vibrations are found in a huge choice of cushions, poufs, lamps and fabrics.
It is in her country of origin, Congo, in partnership with a cabinet making workshop in Kinshasa, that Sandrine Ebene, a former student of the Boulle School, is developing a collaborative furniture project at the borders of design, art and crafts. Inspired by the frame of the famous DSW d’Eames, the Kinshasan workshop has redesigned it in tropical woods : the Kiti Makasi questions the borrowings and inspiration of contemporary furniture.
Zimbabwe, Zambie, Namibie, Burkina-Faso, Ghana, Niger, Botswana : under this South African label, there is an infinite variety of basketry from all over Africa. Each basket in vegetal fibres, sometimes twisted with plastic, celebrates and magnifies basketry’s secular art.
Coco and Shea from Ghana, Papaya and Mango from Senegal, Honey from Zambie, Bissap and Vanilla from Madagascar, Hazelnut from Ivory Coast : spicy or sweet, the scents of this young brand are an invitation to travel, paying tribute to African gardens.
It is in small farms and local communities located on the heights of Lesotho, in South Africa or on the borders of Lake Malawi, between Tanzania and Mozambique, that Angelica draws the virtues of Kudu, a line of cosmetics for which she has bottled the best of African ingredients. Zero essential oils, zero dyes and a whole sustainable and ethical chain, from plantations to harvest, from formulation to packaging.
Imigongos (decorative panels, painted with traditional geometric patterns), embroidered placemats, wooden vases and pearls: this Rwandan label revisits and modernises the ancestral know-how of the Land of a thousand hills.
