Most independent designers present their first runway shows in college classrooms or budget-friendly gallery spaces rented by the hour. Torishéju Dumi held hers in a golden ballroom at the five-star Shangri-La Hotel at Paris Fashion Week last October. Naomi Campbell opened, Paloma Elsesser closed, and Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, one of the most in-demand fashion editors and collaborators in the industry, styled the Spring 2024 ready-to-wear collection for Dumi’s namesake brand.
One year later, Dumi still can’t quite believe her first-ever runway show wasn’t a dream. "I haven’t been able to take in how completely ludicrous and sheerly insane everything was,” she says, taking the call from a couch in her Hackney, London flat. “When I think about [the Spring 2024 show], it just seems like a made-up story or some strange event I imagined.”
The Nigerian-Brazilian designer based in London recalls those in the room—merchandising buyers, fashion editors, and industry scouts hunting for the next design wunderkind—were equally as stupefied, particularly when the '90s Big Six supermodel powerwalked out. "I don't think people realized it was [Campbell] at first, but then everybody instantly turned their heads and did a double-take. It was quite funny," she says with a chuckle.
A menswear graduate from the London College of Fashion with a master's degree from Central Saint Martins, Dumi's Spring 2024 collection—a tight edit of 21 looks titled “Fire on the Mountain”—was her declaration of “Hello, here I am!” to the world. The silhouettes were novel and slightly, intentionally, unsettling. Inspired by the traditional Nigerian lappa worn by her mother's Itsekiri tribe and surrealist David Lynch films, she swaddled foam hoops with black, charcoal, and cherry red cotton. She arranged them to look like serpents slithering across the body. Elsesser wore a halter top with thick tubes tangled around the neck and a skirt made of twisted fabric bunches—as if the model had just awoken and walked out in her thrashed bedsheets.
Even Dumi’s more understated tailoring felt precise with slightly avant-garde undertones, a delicate balance she learned when interning at Ann Demeulemeester and under Phoebe Philo at Celine in the 2010s. Campbell’s opening look was a testament to Dumi's multi-pronged skillset: smart, slouchy trousers, starched black shirting, and a black wool blazer with shoulder pads—but distorted into protruding horns.
The designer’s Spring 2024 collection was widely recognized as a triumph. British Vogue called Dumi “the wildcard who won Paris Fashion Week” and put her on its January 2024 cover. The Metropolitan Museum of Art asked to acquire seven of Dumi’s original pieces for its permanent collection—two of which were included in the 2024 Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion exhibition.
And then Law Roach called: the image architect and celebrity stylist wanted to put Zendaya in look seven from Dumi’s Spring 2024 collection—a wrapped, sculptural crop top and skirt with hoops on the hip and slices of fabric trailing to the floor—for a Dune: Part Two red carpet. “It couldn't have been anybody else but Z to wear that look,” Dumi says. “It’s funny because when making the pieces, I thought, ‘This is going to be for a warrior princess.’ [The look] has a sexiness to it—a bad-bad core element—but there’s an elegance that draws it all together. And that’s Zendaya.”
All of this whirlwind buzz for a baby brand that, on a human's timeline, would only just have started walking and talking—it's enough attention to make any designer on the rise feel overwhelmed by the expedited process.
But Dumi is decidedly unfazed. She practically scoffs at whether the stress of success could dictate her process; “No one is going to make me feel pressured to create. Like, what? You can't pressure art; I create when I want and when I feel like it," she says. “Many artists nowadays feel pressure to work harder, usually from social media, but my mother didn't bring me up that way. Everybody has their one life to live, so why would you stretch yourself thin like that? Why live a life in misery?”
No one is going to make me feel pressured to create. You can't pressure art; I create when I want and when I feel like it.
Torishéju Dumi
Besides, Dumi has gotten quite adept at trusting the journey life takes her on. Growing up in Northwest London, she moved “further and further out into the -shires”—countryside counties such as Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire—after her father's death when she was 14. Upon graduating high school, she spent time in New York City interning at Philip Lim and juggling side gigs of babysitting and running errands for a lawyer family friend. “Even now, when I tell those stories to people,” she says, “I can't believe I did these things like that. Taking notes [for a lawyer] at the New York Supreme Court and running around filing motions—how strange is that?”
Her relationship with Karefa-Johnson also resulted from a funny twist of fate. In 2021, while finishing a master’s degree in fashion design at CSM, Dumi entered the college's L'Oréal Professionnel Award competition for up-and-coming talent. The designer didn’t win; “Apparently, I did everything wrong. They said I lost because I didn't upload my images as I should have. I just did things my way and how I thought things looked better.” But Karefa-Johnson, who served as a judge that year, was thoroughly impressed.
“Gabriela messaged me on Instagram, saying, ‘You didn't get the prize, but I really like your work and think you should do a show. If you ever need anything, let me know because I want support you in any way possible.’” Fast forward a few years, and Johnson made good on her promise, calling in a few favors to secure Dumi’s slot at Paris Fashion Week for the Spring 2024 season and Campbell and Elsesser’s participation.
Supermodel support, a Zendaya co-sign, and a leg-up from Johnson helped Dumi make a splash, but the biggest takeaway from her first-ever fashion show and the hullabaloo that followed is her forceful, undeniable talent. Dumi treats her fabric as any artist would, with reverence and excitement at what hasn’t yet been created. “When I'm working, I tend to sculpt things on a body or a mannequin as if I’m painting, almost using my hands as the paintbrush,” she says. “I like manipulating natural shapes to make them a bit uncanny. I want to make odd clothing that makes you feel like, “What? I don’t understand it, but wow, I like that sensation.’”
Dumi will present her next Spring 2025 runway show on October 1 during the Paris Fashion Week season. It's anxiety-inducing, and the designer is, as expected, a bit apprehensive. But Dumi also enjoys living in that little bubble of fear that comes from unveiling "La Nef de Fous," a collection that's been a year in the making and explores themes about the fragility and fragility of human earthly existence. She relates it to the addicting adrenaline spike from seeing a slasher film. "I don't know why, but watching a scary movie or a thriller makes me happy. I love things that scare me." Dumi's second-ever runway show is just another rush for her and the fashion set alike.
