The Nigerian designer Adeju Thompson is back in Paris following a season at Lagos Fashion Week. “It’s only right that Lagos gets to enjoy my work too,” he said then. At his presentation yesterday at the Palais du Tokyo, he showed renewed eagerness to project internationally.
“Growing up in Lagos, I always felt like an outsider,” reflected Thompson, “but rock ’n’ roll is where I found I was not actually weird.” Spanish Horses, a budding rock band based in Paris, played at the presentation as Thompson walked through his collection. His interpretations of British menswear together with abstractions of West African Yoruba garments made for a particularly appealing contrast that helped place Lagos Space Programme in context. See the hoodies in hand-drawn, indigo dyed fabrics, or how Thompson employed lace made in Nigeria for a blouse and trousers set that transformed the more traditional and conservative material into something utterly contemporary. “No one back in Nigeria is using this in the same way,” he pointed out. “I wanted it to feel… liberated.”
While Thompson cut his silhouettes relaxed and with a feel of contemporary androgyny—aided by the ballet flats and charming fuzzy slippers worn by his models—there was a certain atemporality to this collection that rendered it elegant, and, pardon the crassness, marketable. The real surprises were a sexy pair of red leather trousers with peekaboo holes at the sides between its waistband and pockets and an equally provocative shirtdress whose placket split down the sternum like a keyhole. It was also styled with low rise trousers to emphasize the midriff, which was newly christened as a menswear erogenous zone last season.
“When you think of African identity, you don’t think that there are rock bands in Nigeria,” Thompson teased, “but that’s also what I grew up with.” Embracing the push and pull between the traditional and the unexpected seems to be where Thomson thrives. Balancing global aspirations with homegrown fidelity is walking a tightrope, but Thompson seems increasingly surefooted.
