How Orange Culture is Reclaiming Africa's Stolen Identity Through Androgynous Fashion

By Eniafe Momodu

Today, he's shutting down runways at Lagos and New York Fashion Week, but when Adebayo Oke-Lawal first launched Orange Culture back in 2011, he could not haveknown just how far his vision would take him. On the one hand, Bayo's designs were forward-thinking, thought-provoking and in a lane of their own, but they were also controversial and norm-defying in a way not everybody was willing to embrace. Although he could have set up his fashion brand in Paris, Milan or London where androgynous fashion would hardly be anything to blink at, he opted instead to set up shop in his homecountry, Nigeria - a country where brilliant ideas are too often stifled by overly-conservative mindsets. When reflecting on thetype of society Nigeria is, it's hard to imagine how Bayo-Oke Lawal (who was once told he would go to hell just for making a red suit for a man for making a red suit for a man) ever found the courage to introduce androgynous fashion to conservative Nigeria. But the Orange Culture vision was far bigger thanits detractors, and the world is better because of it. Withthousands of admirers all over the globe and a host of celebrityfans including the likes of Burna Boy, Adekunle Gold, Masego and Chimamanda Adichie, Orange Culture is clearly doing something right.

Samiko Odunukwe for Orange Culture, photography by Jesse Navarre Vos

Dogon tribe (Mali)

One common criticism of the androgynous fashion movement has been that it is somehow "un-African". There is this idea that unless modern clothing exists within the rigid, socially-constructed boundaries of the western gender binary, it must be antithetical to African culture and tradition.But this is a very misinformed, and, I must say, neo-colonial, critique. Somewhere along the way, African culture hasbecome synonymous with white and western conceptions ofmasculinity and femininity. In reality, this would imply that menmust stick to dark-coloured two-pieces in order to remain trueto their African roots. However these are not the true hallmarksof African culture, and they never have been. Look at the Kenyan Maasai tribe, whose men can be seen wearing bright red wrappers with layers of rainbow-coloured beads, or the Swazi and Zulu tribes of southern Africa, who can be spotted wearing layered-print garments with feathery accessories. Andit doesn't stop there - the Dogon people of Mali, the Hamar men in Ethiopia, the Hansi in Tanzania - skirts, bright colours make-up, over-the-top jewellery and dramatic headpieces have all been staple features in traditional African menswear for centuries. Meanwhile kitenge, kikoy fabrics, dashiki prints andpatterned wrappers continue to be worn by men from East to West Africa, and all over the diaspora. These influences can be seen throughout Orange Culture's collections, which regularly draws inspiration from Yoruba culture, infusing adire textiles, buba & sokoto and agbada-inspired pieces. Those who seek to brand androgynous fashion as necessarily 'un-African' do so because they continue to see their own history and heritage through a foreign lens, and in doing so, they fail to appreciate all the diverse expressions of African identity, masculinity and sexuality that westernisationhas forced us to forget. Thus, Orange Culture's triumphant rejection of gender finds futurism in the antique and reclaims Africa's lost identity in a way that history can not ignore.

Maasai man