Named after her mother, Olapeju, the West London-born designer paid homage to the wealth of culture within British-Nigerian communities
In May of 2019, I was on a plane from Trieste to London, returning from the 17th annual ITS event spotlighting emerging designers. Sitting next to me was British-Nigerian designer Tolu Coker, who had won the year prior and returned to exhibit new work. Speaking for most of the two-hour flight, she struck me as a present and open individual with a genuine interest in people and the world around her. Five years later, we are meeting again. This time she has graduated from the ‘one to watch’ label and her apparent intrigue with human nature has only appeared to grow, alongside her brand. Sitting in her studio a few days away from her SS25 show at London Fashion Week, she’s busy yet has maintained a sense of calm and stillness. “it is insane,” she says “but it is coming together.”
On Sunday night, in the NEWGEN space of 180 studios, she presented Olapeju, a collection named after her mother which translates from the Yoruba phrase “where wealth gathers”. As her third show on the official London Fashion Week schedule, she appears to have found her footing. “Each show you are just putting what you have learned from the last one into practice, as well as just trying to elevate and evolve,” Coker says. After exploring ‘Sunday best’ attire for AW24, this season the Tolu Coker woman channelled the ‘top-to-toe’ dressing of British-Nigerian matriarchs. Sharp tailoring, with high-cinched waists, was paired with 60s-inspired A-line silhouettes and exaggerated collars to emulate the sartorial codes of Yoruba style and draping. As a nod to her community and North Kensington’s Westway Stables, the collection also featured equestrian-inspired jackets and balloon-hem trousers.
Wallpaper-inspired prints also evoked the domestic spaces captured in her late father Kayode Coker’s photography – which was also featured in the space – grounding the collection in personal history while upholding a commitment to sustainable, heirloom-worthy design. Working with Manolo Blahnik, the shoes for the collection featured three new boot styles made by Coker using offcuts of deadstock leather, as well as 28 pre-existing silhouettes.
Closed by British supermodel Jourdan Dunn, the show’s finale was a touching tribute joyfully infused with smiles and tears. Joining one by one, all the models gathered at the end of the runway before happily dancing down the rest of the runway together. “I think joy was also a means of resistance,” Coker says. “Our stories are often told from the perspective of lack, and I think it is important to shine a light on that and also to offer more dignified narratives too.”
Below Coker spoke to us about her collection, being inspired by her parents and the nuance of sustainability.
What would you say was the starting point for your SS25 collection? What were the main inspirations?
Tolu Coker: My mum, it is literally named after her. Seeing my parents and how much they contributed to the community made me realise how many Nigerians, or just how many people through immigration, had been really big contributors to these beautiful communities that exist today. It is looking at it through the lens of my mother as the matriarch because I think back then a lot of the praise went to the men but the women really held down the family. This is welcoming people into my mum’s home and seeing community through her lens.
That’s so special, has she seen a lot of the collection already?
Tolu Coker: No not at all, zero. It is going to be a complete surprise for her. I think it is the best way too. It has been quite nice being a bit of a fly on the wall and capturing and noticing different things. It is through her eyes, but also through mine. It is quite intergenerational.
What is your design process like when working on a full collection?
Tolu Coker: It is a bit mental, the way I design. I went to Central Saint Martins and I do think sometimes they probably thought, she was a nut or on the wrong course. A lot of the time I don’t even necessarily start with a silhouette. I might start with a feeling and then the feeling might have been evoked from a sound. It is this documentary-type thing, where you are trying to find the person in the album and piece together their story, and then something they have said makes you think about clothes through the lens of their wardrobe – this collection was very much like that. I do not have a linear design process. There was a point where I literally rethinking and redesigning bits of the collection. I would say it’s quite erratic, but it is organised chaos.
You’re turning the show space into a late 70s British-Nigerian living room, could you tell me more about that?
Tolu Coker: For me, clothes have never really been a commodity on their own. They exist for me within a universe. We grew up in a working-class home, and I think for a lot of people in the North Kensington estates – which is sort of where this living room set is based – at the time, there was a lot of political unrest. It was the whole ‘no Blacks, no dogs, no Irish’. People would not rent to immigrants coming and so you had tonnes of people living in these apartments that were quite cold and damp but they really made it something special.
For me, it was really important to show this collection in the context of that emotion. It is one thing to look at and consume clothes, it is another thing to be transported into a place, space and time and feel the connections beyond that. I think that is just part of my bigger personal and brand philosophy. It is about clothes that have a feeling you invest in, keep for a long time and pass down.
It does not have to seem like this really big political, social activist movement, to say, hey let us just be a little bit more considerate – Tolu Coker
I think it is a common experience growing up first generation to shun your household differences to blend in. I talk about it with friends a lot, as you get older you realise it’s actually quite a privilege to be able to experience so much culture in our own homes. Walking through an aunt’s house with all the photos, books and heirlooms is like having our own personal family museum.
Tolu Coker: I have this conversation with a lot of my friends too. [There are] things that have become really important things to me now, like always saying to people that ‘no there’s rice at home’, or even wearing your older cousin’s hand me down – we had that way of life out of necessity, to be resourceful. As a kid you are not so conscious of that, then you grow up not wasting food, reusing every container, opening the ice cream tub and it is stew. [So] when you have these conversations about sustainability, wealth and luxury, your attachment to the notions of what those words mean is inherently very different. That upbringing, which perhaps through another lens is just poverty, but from another lens, it is a wealth of culture and values. That is what this collection is really about.
Your late father’s photography archive was also a key part of this collection. Was that something you always had access to growing up?
Tolu Coker: My dad passed away really suddenly when I was about 14. When we were younger, my dad always had a camera. He was always photographing everything, and everyone remembered him as the uncle with the camera. He took pictures of the things that you thought were the most insignificant. But when someone passes, that becomes an inheritance. He did not leave behind any will or wealth or anything like that in terms of physical commodity, but these archives have been really significant for me in terms of just having a reference point for who we are, where we came from and what our story is.
We have thousands of albums of his. He would do events photography and photography of protests in the area because he and my mum were big social activists. He had this real thing about institutions not caring about humans, especially working-class humans. A lot of portraiture was his way of documenting us with dignity – it’s like what I design now.
What do you hope people can take away from the show and collection as a whole?
Tolu Coker: First and foremost, I have done a lot of it for my mum. It’s for her to feel seen and valued. From a clothing lens, it’s the fact we consume clothes in a way that is insane. When we have these conversations about sustainability and the value of clothing, I see these [old] photo albums and see people wearing the same jacket in so many different settings and it’s completely normal, acceptable, and they look fire. When you have an emotional attachment to something you buy, it is no longer a haul or just a purchase, it’s an investment. I’m sure everyone has a story about a parent’s jacket or grandparent’s something. Are our future kids gonna be keeping our pieces? It does not have to seem like this really big political, social activist movement, to say, hey let us just be a little bit more considerate. It can benefit us too and it can look amazing.
Head to the gallery above to check out backstage imagery from the show.