Copenhagen Fashion Week drew to a close with a grand display of brands showcasing their Spring/Summer 2027 collections in the Danish capital. Among the presentations that caught the eye was IAMISIGO, where the pursuit of identity was woven directly into garments through an unexpected vocabulary of materials,,,, including fruit.
Behind the collection is Bubu Ogisi, the Nigerian designer and fibre artist whose Lagos-based label has developed a distinctive language around African craft, heritage and contemporary design. For Ogisi, textiles are more than a medium for clothing.
“We are building from materials sourced and worked across the continent: banana fibre from Uganda, sisal from Tanzania, recycled aluminium from Kenya, cotton from Nigeria,” Ogisi said.
For this collection, that philosophy manifested in work concerned with displacement, heritage and belonging. Fabric offcuts, crochet, intricate weaving and sculptural, billowing accessories created silhouettes that felt deliberately unconstrained, resisting the uniformity often associated with contemporary fashion.
The use of banana fibre was particularly striking. Derived from agricultural waste, the material transforms what might otherwise be discarded into a tactile textile, connecting the finished garment to the land and the communities that produced it. Elsewhere, sisal, cotton and recycled aluminium expanded the collection’s material vocabulary across different regions of Africa.
For IAMISIGO, this cross‑continental approach is deliberate. The brand’s practice moves beyond the notion that African fashion should be defined by a single geography, tribe or visual tradition. Instead, Ogisi combines techniques and materials from multiple communities to create a mode of cultural hybridity.
IAMISIGO is, by design, wholly artisanal. Pieces are handmade by African craftspeople, with techniques adapted from knowledge passed down through generations. Brass and glass making, weaving, crochet and fibre work are reconfigured into contemporary garments and accessories, creating a dialogue between ancestral practices and the present.
“Sacred Ecologies is our most politically urgent work yet. It asks what it means for a body to exist in relation to land — not romantically, but as a site of resistance,” Ogisi said.
That idea also situates the collection within the wider conversation around Copenhagen Fashion Week’s increasingly rigorous sustainability standards. IAMISIGO is currently undergoing onboarding for the Spring/Summer 2027 season and, from Autumn/Winter 2027, will be assessed against Copenhagen Fashion Week’s Minimum Standards for sustainability.
“The Zalando Visionary Prize brought us to Copenhagen Fashion Week, and we took that as a sign to decolonise spaces,” Ogisi said. “To me, clothing has always been protective armour for the spirit, the self, the being inside it. A language of the body.”
In IAMISIGO’s world, that language is spoken through fibre, metal, waste and handwork. Banana plants become textiles, discarded materials become new objects, and inherited techniques become contemporary forms. The result is fashion that does not simply look to Africa’s past but asks how that past can continue to shape its future.
