Imad Eduso Into the Wild at Lagos Fashion week 2026

At Lagos Fashion Week 2026, Imad Eduso presented Into the Wild, a collection that offered an opportunity to consider how a Nigerian fashion label can preserve its established identity while exploring new directions. The presentation included the brand’s first menswear showing, alongside womenswear that continued its exploration of shape, texture, colour and expressive dressing.

The collection featured raffia hats, high-waisted and bubble-shaped trousers, fringed details, shimmering animal-inspired prints and lace dresses. These elements gave the presentation a varied visual language, moving between pieces that emphasised movement and others that relied on the structure and finish of the garment.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of the presentation was the decision to introduce menswear without abandoning the brand’s existing approach to design. A collection can expand its audience and product categories while still retaining a recognisable point of view. The challenge is to make that expansion feel like a natural progression rather than a departure from what made the label distinctive in the first place.

The runway presentation suggested an interest in that balance. Into the Wild brought together recognisable Imad Eduso signatures and a new category of clothing, making the collection relevant not only as a seasonal presentation but also as a moment in the brand’s development.

The Designer Behind Imad Eduso

Imad Eduso was established in Lagos in 2015 by Dami Olukoya, who leads the label as its owner and creative director. According to the brand’s official profile, the label was developed around contemporary womenswear, combining classic styles with current trends and vibrant colours to create versatile pieces.

The brand’s design approach draws on Nigeria’s expressive cultural landscape and an interest in the female form. Its clothing seeks to combine confident silhouettes with considered tailoring and craftsmanship, allowing garments to make a statement while maintaining a clear relationship between construction and wearability.

The label’s official background also describes an inspiration drawn partly from Olukoya’s sister and the timeless style of Audrey Hepburn. These influences offer useful context for understanding the relationship between femininity, elegance and individuality in the brand’s identity. Rather than treating classic dressing as something fixed in the past, Imad Eduso uses it as a starting point for contemporary interpretations.

Over time, the label has developed beyond its original womenswear offering. It now includes Imad Eduso Bridal, which caters to different wedding occasions, as well as a children’s collection. These extensions reflect an effort to carry the brand’s design language into different stages and settings of dressing.

The brand has also received visibility through fashion presentations and public figures who have worn its pieces. Its official Lagos Fashion Week profile identifies personalities including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lupita Nyong’o, Dakore Akande-Egbuson and Bolanle Olukanni among those associated with the label’s designs.

Into the Wild: Texture, Movement and New Possibilities

The title Into the Wild provided an appropriate frame for a collection that explored texture and movement. Raffia, fringe, lace and shimmering prints each create different effects when used in clothing. Their combination can make a garment feel more tactile and visually expressive, particularly when the pieces are seen in motion on a runway.

Raffia hats brought a material associated with craft and natural texture into the presentation. Fringed trousers introduced movement, allowing the garments to respond to the body rather than remaining visually static. High-waisted and bubble-shaped trousers also offered alternatives to more conventional trouser silhouettes, drawing attention to proportion and volume.

In the womenswear, shimmering animal-inspired prints and lace dresses provided another side to the collection. These details can create contrast between surface decoration and the form of a garment. The result was a presentation that did not depend on one technique or fabric to communicate its ideas.

I believe this variety matters because a collection is often strongest when its different elements contribute to a broader design argument. In this case, the movement created by fringe, the texture of raffia and the visual effect of printed and lace fabrics helped establish a connection between the title and the clothes. The pieces approached the idea of the wild through material and silhouette rather than relying on a literal interpretation alone.

The collection also invited consideration of how a designer can reinterpret established signatures. When a label has developed a recognisable aesthetic, introducing new materials or silhouettes can help keep that identity evolving. The important question is whether those changes remain connected to the designer’s central interests.

For Imad Eduso, the introduction of menswear was particularly significant in this regard.

A First Menswear Showing and a Broader Audience

The debut of menswear marked a notable development for Imad Eduso. A label known primarily for womenswear must make several design decisions when entering a new category: which elements of its existing aesthetic should be retained, which need to be adapted, and how the new collection should relate to the audience already familiar with its work.

Into the Wild approached that transition through shape, texture and detailing. Raffia hats and fringed trousers offered distinctive visual features, while the broader use of volume created opportunities to explore how clothing sits on and moves with the body.

Expanding into menswear can also create new commercial possibilities. It allows a brand to speak to additional customers, develop new product categories and consider how its design identity translates across different wardrobes. However, growth in a new category depends on more than the runway debut. Product development, fit, pricing, distribution and consistent demand all contribute to whether a new line can become a sustainable part of a business.

That makes the menswear debut an important starting point rather than a final measure of success. The collection introduced the direction; subsequent releases and customer response will help establish how the category develops.

For the Nigerian fashion industry, such expansion also contributes to the wider conversation about the range of opportunities available to local labels. Designers are not limited to maintaining one category forever. With a clear identity and thoughtful execution, a brand can explore adjacent markets while preserving the qualities that distinguish it.

Imad Eduso Lagos Fashion Week 2026 Craft and Contemporary African Fashion

Lagos Fashion Week provides a platform for designers to place their work within wider conversations about heritage, innovation and the future of African fashion. Its 2026 programme encouraged attention to the relationship between craft and contemporary design, including the ways materials and techniques can be interpreted for modern wardrobes.

Imad Eduso’s presentation can be considered within this broader context. The use of raffia, texture and surface detail brought material interest to the runway, while the tailoring and silhouettes connected those elements to a contemporary fashion vocabulary.

It is important, however, not to assume that every use of a traditional or natural material automatically represents sustainability. Questions about sourcing, production methods, waste, durability and working conditions remain relevant when assessing the environmental and social impact of fashion. The visual presence of a material is only one part of that larger discussion.

What the collection clearly demonstrated was an interest in combining different textures and forms. This can be valuable in an industry where designers are working to make their collections distinctive while developing commercially relevant products.

For a label such as Imad Eduso, the task is to maintain the balance between expressive design and practical considerations. Occasionwear, bridal pieces and everyday clothing can serve different customer needs, but they must still communicate a coherent brand identity. The same is true of a new menswear category.

What the Collection Signals for the Brand

The significance of Into the Wild lies partly in its combination of continuity and change. The presentation retained the label’s interest in expressive silhouettes and considered details while introducing a menswear offering that could broaden its reach.

That combination is worth watching as the brand moves beyond the runway. A fashion show can introduce a creative direction, but a collection’s longer-term influence depends on how its ideas translate into pieces that customers want to wear, how reliably the brand can produce them and how effectively it communicates its identity.

Imad Eduso’s established presence in Nigerian fashion gives it a foundation from which to explore these questions. Its development since 2015, alongside its bridal and children’s offerings, indicates that the brand has already considered ways to extend its design language across different categories.

The new menswear presentation adds another stage to that development. If the label continues to build on the textures, silhouettes and tailoring seen in Into the Wild, it will have an opportunity to shape a more expansive wardrobe while retaining its existing design perspective.

Ultimately, Imad Eduso’s Lagos Fashion Week 2026 presentation was more than a display of individual looks. It marked a new chapter for a Lagos-based label, one that is testing how its creative identity can evolve through fresh categories, expressive materials and a continued interest in contemporary African dressing.

The writer of this article does not claim to know the individuals named personally. The information about their backgrounds, as published on Global News Arena, is based on independent online research.

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