Will Naomi Campbell Walk at Nigerian Designer Kenneth Ize’s Paris Fashion Week Debut?
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The Paris Fashion Week women’s calendar has been released — with African talent front and center.
Nigerian designer Kenneth Ize will make his Paris runway debut on Feb. 24, kicking off a week which also has South African designer and LVMH Prize winner Thebe Magugu on the presentation schedule.
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The fashion world is abuzz that Naomi Campbell might once again lend her support to the Lagos based Ize, who tapped her to appear during his Arise Fashion Week runway show in April.
For that outing, he also secured model /performer Alton Mason — the first black model to walk for Chanel who has since starred in a Louis Vuitton campaign and performed on Virgil Abloh’s Vuitton runway last year.
Ize, who launched in 2016 with menswear, now designs dual gender collections. The move came after 70% of his men’s pieces were actually being bought by women.
The designer grew up between Vienna and Lagos, where he supports the local economy using local weavers to make the traditional Aso Oke textile that features strongly in his clothes. He studied in Vienna and interned in New York with Bono and Ali Hewson’s label Edun which helped promote trade with Africa.
Magugu who is based in Johannesburg, said he planned to spend his LVMH Prize money solidifying the foundations of his three year-old label, renting a new studio and expanding his previous staff of three. Unlike many designers, he doesn’t shy away from politics and a recent collection referenced the Black Sash women’s resistance movement during the era of apartheid in South Africa.
Elsewhere the ready-to-wear schedule, which will run from February 24 to March 3, also sees the return of Kenzo under new creative director Felipe Oliveira Baptista on Feb. 26.
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