Fashion Forward: 10 Lagos Fashion Week Designers Take Over Spotify’s Playlist

Ten designers from this year’s Lagos Fashion Week have taken over Spotify’s flagship fashion playlist, Fashion Forward, for the month of October.

This curated playlist features tracks that will complement their runway exhibitions, providing a seamless fusion of music and fashion.

The designers showcased in this collaboration represent a diverse array of talent showcasing at this year’s Lagos Fashion Week. They are Abigail Ajobi, Emmanuel Okoro, Frank Aghuno, Bubu Ogisi, Aristide Loua, Michelle Adepoju, Adebayo Oke-Lawal, Sisiano Paolo, Taju Ibrahim, and Iona McCreath, hailing from various parts of the continent, including Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, and Kenya.

This unique partnership between Lagos Fashion Week and Spotify highlights the designers’ individuality and the exceptional contributions both parties bring to the worlds of music and fashion, respectively. Their selections for the playlist span a wide range of genres, featuring Afrobeats tracks from acclaimed artists like Burna Boy, Davido and Rema. Additionally, listeners can expect to discover Afropop hits from the likes of Mali’s Fatoumata Diawara, a dive back into the past with Fela Kuti, along with alternative sounds from emerging Nigerian talents such as SGaWD and Lady Donli, Ghana’s Amaarae and Kenya’s Just a Band.

The Fashion Forward playlist, boasting nearly 46,000 saves, stands as one of Spotify’s highly favoured fashion playlists, joining the ranks of others like Runway and ‘fit check. Its audience spans from young adults in their late teens to individuals in their forties. Notably, it enjoys widespread popularity in diverse global cities including Lagos and Los Angeles, as well as countries like Japan and the UK.

For this year’s New York Fashion Week, Spotify partnered with the Council of Fashion Designers of America, the sole organiser of the NYFW schedule of shows, to launch New York Fashion Week Official Playlist. In a year of many firsts for Africa, Thebe Magugu was the first Africa based fashion designer to take over the Fashion Forward playlist in March, so it feels fitting that one of Africa’s biggest fashion weeks, Lagos Fashion Week has taken over the Fashion Forward playlist for the month of October.

The playlist showcases a diverse selection of songs and artists spanning across different eras. It takes a journey through time, starting from as far back as 1975, when Fela Kuti’s “Water No Get Enemy” was released, then 1996 with the timeless track “Femme de Feu” by Gadji Celi. Moving through the 2010s, it features hits like Wande Coal’s “You Bad” and Davido’s “Dami Duro.” Bringing it back to the present day, the playlist culminates with the contemporary sensation, Rema’s chart-topping single “Charm.”

The worlds of music and fashion have always collided, as Emmanuel Okoro, Creative Director of Emmy Kasbit says, “Both have a symbiotic and divine relationship. Can you imagine a fashion show without a soundtrack or music to set the mood? Can you imagine an artist set to perform on stage without an attire that sets the tone of the music they create? I don’t think that has ever happened, so music and fashion definitely go hand in hand.”

“Fashion and music are intertwined partners, mutually influencing one another in a dance of creativity and self-expression. Spotify consistently demonstrates its support for various facets of creativity, seamlessly blending different parts of the industry,” says Victor Okpala, Spotify’s Artist and Label Partnerships Manager for West Africa.