Paramole urges designers to prioritise culture

Lagos-based fashion designer, Omotayo Paramole. Photo: Naomi Chima.

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Lagos-based fashion designer, Omotayo Paramole, has called on African designers to treat cultural identity as a non-negotiable part of their work, warning that an industry built solely on trends will never command lasting global respect.

Speaking ahead of the launch of a new TESMI collection in Lagos, Paramole emphasised that African fashion can only achieve its full weight on the world stage if creators refuse to dilute their roots in pursuit of visibility.

He said, “Fashion is not just about what looks good in photographs. It is memory, history, and a way of saying who we are without speaking.”

The designer, who has spent more than a decade in the industry and over seven years leading his label TESMI Design, started the brand from a small room where early clients trusted him with hand-drawn sketches and unfinished ideas. His career took a major turn in 2018 when he won the Vlisco Fashion Fund Nigeria competition, emerging as the top designer out of several hundred applicants.

The experience, which included funding support and technical training in the Netherlands, exposed him to a network of creatives across the continent and reinforced his belief that African designers do not need to copy foreign aesthetics to compete internationally.

Paramole argues that the strongest advantage African fashion holds is authenticity. “If you remove culture from our work, then we are only doing cheaper versions of what already exists elsewhere. Our strength is that a fabric from Abeokuta, a motif from Osogbo, or a story from Kano can become a garment that nobody else in the world can recreate honestly.”

Naomi was trained in the Yaba College of Technology, Yaba, and the University of Lagos, Akoka. She writes crime and court stories for PUNCH

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