Alára Sets Sights on E-commerce Following Brooklyn Museum Success
It was the summer of Alára at the Brooklyn Museum.
The Lagos-born luxury fashion and lifestyle concept shop landed alongside the “Africa Fashion” exhibit in June, and since opening night — which saw the shop in a state of squeezing-room only as attendees took in treasures from the continent like many hadn’t seen before — it’s been a place of cultural connection.
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And that’s exactly the mission founder Reni Folawiyo had for Alára’s debut outside of Nigeria.
“It was exciting, a great moment of connection to our diaspora, to people who love culture,” she said of the museum run, which wraps on Oct. 22 in line with the end of the exhibition. “It was [also] interesting in terms of understanding the market and understanding what it is that people want to see from Africa or want to consume from Africa. I think that, from my assessment of our time, people love to see the depth and variety of what we brought. It’s educating for them, gives them a new idea of Africa that probably they would never have had a chance to see all at once, in one place. In terms of storytelling and awareness, that was amazing.”
Visitors to the shop have been steady, with labels like Eki Kere, Dye Lab, Lagos Space Programme, Awa Meite and Brandon Blackwood among those the Alára team said have been “exceptionally well received.” The shop’s Instagram has seen its New York followers tick up, too, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez counted among them.
Alára brought pieces to the Brooklyn Museum location, a significantly scaled-down version of its Lagos flagship, like handmade handbags woven in Burkina Faso from recycled plastic bags by Facteur Céleste, art-adorned skateboard decks by Mimi Plange, and an intricately hand-beaded chair traditionally made for Yoruban royalty. Hats and T-shirts with African sayings, coffee-table books, Brother Vellies’ Togo flat and a choker made of cowrie shells by artist Lafalaise Dion were also part of the mix.
But it was the fashion that set this Alára-Brooklyn Museum moment apart from other museum gift shops and saw the most sales traction for the shop.
“It was interesting that in a world where we see that fashion ready-to-wear is not moving as fast as you would think or that it should be now, especially in luxury, it was interesting to see that we sold a lot of ready-to-wear, more than anything else. And that was not expected because we had to push for that to happen, to have a lot of ready-to-wear, being in a museum shop,” Folawiyo said. “I think it was an interesting idea to have a fashion store and to put fitting rooms in a museum shop.”
Labels like Thebe Magugu, Mami Wata, Abiola Olusola and Tongoro were part of the curation, which ranged in price point from lower to luxury.
The key idea there, Folawiyo said, was to “dispel the idea that everything African is cheap and to start to push that narrative that we do have a certain level of clothing that fits into the luxury conversation. It might be in a different way because we have high levels of artisanship, and we think that is a very strong point for Africa, understanding that we need to share the depths of what we’re producing in Africa but we also need to empower these artisans because I really do think that there’s a future in that — preserving our culture and traditions, but also empowering the makers. And that’s actually one of the biggest things that was important for us for this particular engagement.”
The Burkina Faso bag, for example, comes with a tag hand-signed by the woman who made it.
Keeping the culture alive at multiple points, when the shop launched a collaboration between Nigerian streetwear brand Wafflesncreme and Nigerian Afrobeats singer Asake, the artist stopped by before his Barclays Center show.
It’s a meld of African and diasporic cultures, fashion and art, music and tradition that Folawiyo wants Alára to be a point of connection for.
As its Brooklyn stint winds down, the opportunity for the shop is global. It’s “Alára World,” as the shop’s founder calls it.
“Looking at the trajectory of retail generally, we realized that retail, on a formal level, is kind of going down. We assessed that, anyway, but also, we [thought], why don’t we find a way to engage people in different ways, have experiential moments where we’re not in one place, we move around a lot, but we move around with our culture?” she said. “We want to move forward with great attention to our diaspora…[because] number one, it keeps us together, and number two, it shows the world in a really strong block the importance of Africa and its diaspora. So we wanted to connect first with that but then going forward, we want to connect with different genres, in different ways. We can connect with an established designer to create interesting objects, it could be fashion, it could be design but with a fantastic storyline.”
In other words, Alára World could manifest next in new collaborations with Black designers the world over, in other museums, in subsequent locations for the “Africa Fashion” exhibit or as a pop-up in places that make sense. Perhaps, all of the above.
But first, for those fretting over the final month of access to this petite cultural powerhouse in Brooklyn, e-commerce is in Alára’s future.
“That’s a task the team are on at the moment,” Folawiyo said. “I think that it’s important for us to have that presence [after] we leave the Brooklyn museum.
“We’ve made the connection, I think the question is, what’s the next way to stay in touch with the diaspora and not lose the connection that we’ve made?…We have to dig deeper, of course, connecting to the designers, seeing what designers are doing and making a conscious effort to have actual moments with them,” she continued. “Then imagine when we deepen these connections and we start to actually do things together to connect people in both regions. I think it’s both creatively strong and it’s also financially strong, economically strong.…Both the immediate African diaspora and [other diaspora populations], they contribute so much to GDP [gross domestic product] for us in Africa…there’s potential for us to bring so much more to our communities.”
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