#textiles

Lagos Fashion Week ran Oct. 28 to Nov. 1, its 15th year since fashion entrepreneur Omoyemi Akerele founded it in 2011. Organised by Style House Files, this edition's theme was "CRAFTED: Heritage. Innovation. Circular Futures," putting traditional techniques such as weaving, dyeing, embroidery and beadwork at the centre, alongside reuse and less textile waste, 88Lately reports.

More than 50 labels took part. The main runway shows ran Oct. 29 to 31 at the LagosFW Tents at the Federal Palace Hotel on Victoria Island. Opening presentations on Oct. 28 included Sisiano's Spring/Summer 2027 collection "Some Birds Fly South", Orange Culture's "The In-Between", and "Akwete Reimagined", a capsule by ALÁRA and Emmy Kasbit built around Akwete, a traditional Nigerian woven textile.

Al Jazeera reports on AI tools that can generate or reproduce traditional Indian textile designs, from a system built by Shillong professor Bitupan Deka to create new gamusa motifs, to the Rekh Sanganeri dataset of hand-block prints and Tata Consultancy Services' Bridgital Loom, which turns designs into loom instructions and is being piloted in Kanchipuram.

Artisans quoted are split: Bagru block-printer Dinesh Chhipa says he doesn't fault digital tools but asks that they stop borrowing regional names like Bagru and Jaipuri; Kanchipuram weaver Ananthalakshmi Vadivel says machine imitations "can never replace the original." The piece notes that India floated a "blanket licence" for AI training in December 2025, but that intellectual property law assumes a traceable author, while a motif is communal property.