Following his stellar presentation at Paris Fashion Week, Adeju Thompson talks about the origins of his label. “I’m always going to be exploring this alternate African narrative. I’m proud of it,” he says
- Who is it? Founded in 2018, Lagos Space Programme is the label of Nigerian designer Adeju Thompson
- Why do I want it? The brand’s gender-fluid propositions incorporate both Nigerian and British fashion heritages in a distinctive, contemporary visual language
- Where can I find it? Lagos Space Programme is available at Alara Lagos, HNW, Adekuver, and Browns
Who is it? Nigerian designer Adeju Thompson had an inkling from a young age that he was destined for a life in fashion – “I didn’t know that it was fashion at the time, but some of my earliest childhood memories are of drawing women in dresses,” he laughs. Thompson went on to study both fine arts and fashion design in the UK, but it was at the “university of life,” observing and embodying all he could within the cultural fringes of Lagos, where he honed his unique personal and design philosophies. “I met a guy called Yegwa who owned a concept store called Stranger Lagos that sold Yohji, Comme … designers I’d learnt about in my studies,” Thompson recalls, “but to interact with these clothes, to see how the ideas lived on bodies of people who looked like me, finally made the intersections of my interests physical.”
With the support of Stranger Lagos, Thompson produced small experimental collections until he was certain that he had found his voice, and defined the singular vision that would underpin Lagos Space Programme. If the label’s name was, at least initially, somewhat frivolous – “I think at that time I was listening to a lot of podcasts on space,” he muses – it quickly came to embody the designer’s razor-edged curiosity to uncover forgotten (or perhaps silenced) queer and cultural legacies from Nigeria, a country in which homosexual activity is criminalised. “Space is the last frontier. It’s boundless, it’s expansive,” he says, “And I like the idea that people can see my work and expand their visual references of what they think African design is.”
If past collections explored cultural archetypes and communities, Lagos Space Programme’s most recent presentation at Paris Fashion Week, entitled Invitation to Ojude Oba, followed a fictional character as he prepared for Ojude Oba festival, a one-day celebration of culture, fashion, and royalty for the Yoruba people. “This person was a second or third-generation British-Nigerian who receives an invitation from the King to join his personal celebrations,” Thompson explains. “And then he receives a letter from Ovations [the Nigerian equivalent of Hello! Magazine] asking to photograph him getting ready.” Styled by Ola Ebiti, each look was an elegant, gender-fluid proposition of an ongoing dialogue between Nigerian and British fashion heritages within a decolonised space – neither took precedent over the other.
Why do I want it? Although Thompson’s design vocabulary references both British and Nigerian techniques and textiles, he has deftly manipulated each craftsmanship to define a visual language that is distinctly and wonderfully his own. Take, for example, a perfectly cut one-and-a-half breasted jacket, inspired by a photograph of King Charles in a Prince-de-Galles checked suit, which was hand-dyed and painted with a tweed motif according to the Yoruba technique of Adiré. Elsewhere in the collection, an Agbada (a robe worn by the Yoruba people) is reimagined in a flowing, draped indigo-dyed wool – the opposite of the gown’s traditionally structured and stiff silhouette. Yet no garment is caged in either/or cultural heritage: Thompson’s contemporary silhouettes invite the wearer into his world to explore novel references while also encouraging them to adapt his language to their unique lived experience. Just as in space, there are no frontiers.
Although the majority of his garments are produced in Nigeria, as the winner of the 2023 International Woolmark Prize, Thompson has worked with suppliers and factories in Italy and Amsterdam to innovate unique wool-silk blends suited to the clement Nigerian weather. “Obviously with a tropical climate, we don’t have a history of knitwear,” he laughs. “It’s not, for now, a thriving business.” The bronze hardware and embellishments adorning the textiles are, however, handcrafted by artisans in Benin, for whom the designer has the utmost respect for “their history, their knowledge, their discipline.”
As Thompson looks to grow Lagos Space Programme with more accessible offerings, like T-shirts and hoodies, he is quick to reiterate that, despite mixing with other cultures, “the shapes and silhouettes are very much Nigerian.” “I’m always going to be exploring this alternate African narrative. I’m proud of it and want to share where I come from. It’s myself. It’s my life.”
Where can I find it? Lagos Space Programme is available at Alara Lagos, HNW, Adekuver, and Browns.