Style House Files Unveils Woven Threads VII: CRAFTED Fashion Experience
LAGOS, NIGERIA — Style House Files (SHF) has officially announced the seventh edition of its flagship platform, Woven Threads, under the theme CRAFTED. This immersive four-day event is scheduled to take place from April 9th to 12th, 2026, at 274A Kofo Abayomi Street on Victoria Island in Lagos. The gathering will bring together designers, innovators, and key industry stakeholders to advance circularity, sustainability, and responsible production throughout Africa's fashion and textile value chains.
Celebrating Africa's Craft Heritage and Circular Future
Woven Threads stands as one of two primary platforms produced by Style House Files, alongside Lagos Fashion Week, dedicated to driving innovation, sustainability, and growth within Africa's fashion sector. Building upon the success of the 2025 cross-continental dialogues held in London and Lagos, CRAFTED serves as an immersive experience that honors Africa's rich heritage of craftsmanship while highlighting contemporary circular design, material innovation, and systems-led thinking that are shaping the future of fashion on the continent.
The activation explores the concept that sustainability in Africa is not a novel invention but rather a lived practice deeply embedded in craft traditions, material intelligence, community-based production, and adaptive reuse. It positions Africa not merely as a source of cultural inspiration but as a hub of knowledge, innovation, and solutions where ancestral practices converge with science-backed ideas to address global sustainability challenges.
Partnerships and Programming Highlights
Woven Threads VII will feature programming developed in collaboration with The Earthshot Prize, uniting pioneering voices from across the continent to promote systems-led thinking and catalyze meaningful action toward a more sustainable African fashion future. Omoyemi Akerele, Founder of Lagos Fashion Week and Style House Files, emphasized, "Woven Threads has always believed that Africa's most powerful sustainability ideas are already here, living in our craft traditions, our material knowledge, our communities. CRAFTED is an invitation to see that clearly, and to build from it. This year, we are not just celebrating heritage; we are demonstrating that it is the blueprint for the future of fashion."
The event will unfold as a curated, design-led environment comprising four interconnected components: an Exhibition showcasing the continent's finest circular designers and innovators, a Knowledge Exchange facilitating in-depth dialogues on material intelligence and systems-led thinking, and The Showcase positioning Africa as a site of knowledge and solutions where traditional practices and modern ideas converge.
Detailed Schedule and Key Initiatives
At the core of the activation is a rich program of digital presentations, talks, and panels that anchor the intellectual and cultural ambition of this year's edition. Woven Threads VII will open on April 9th with a series of digital presentations across Lagos Fashion Week's platforms, exploring craft practices and circular approaches to design through reconstruction, adaptation, and thoughtful making.
On April 10th, the event will host the official launch of Project Irapada — Lagos Fashion Week's first-ever textile waste mapping initiative, developed in partnership with LAWMA and the Bestseller Foundation. Project Irapada represents the first citywide study to uncover the volume, flow, and causes of textile waste in Lagos, providing a credible, data-backed baseline for policymakers, brands, innovators, and communities working toward circular solutions. Its launch at Woven Threads VII marks the beginning of a broader effort to build a circular fashion ecosystem in Lagos, followed by the private opening of the CRAFTED Exhibition.
The public program runs from April 10th to 12th, with the CRAFTED Exhibition welcoming visitors from 10 am daily. Each afternoon, from 12 pm to 3 pm, CRAFTED Talks will bring together practitioners, innovators, and thinkers for conversations traversing circular design, material futures, craft education, and waste justice.
Notable Participants and Panel Discussions
Curator and researcher Sunny Dolat will participate in a Fireside Chat moderated by Adaeze Oguzie, offering an intimate look into the ideas and provocations shaping this year's CRAFTED edition. A headline panel, The African Fashion Compact: Shared Principles for a Responsible Future, developed in partnership with The Earthshot Prize, will feature Woven Threads founder Omoyemi Akerele, Simone Smit (Earthshot Prize Director of Africa), Adama Paris of Dakar Fashion Week, Mahlet Teklemariam of Hub of Africa Fashion Week, Liz Ricketts of The OR Foundation, Jackie May of TWYG, Renee Neblett of Kokrobitey Institute, and NEST co-founder and Woven Threads curator Sunny Dolat.
This session will convene fashion founders and ecosystem leaders to define shared principles for circularity and responsible production across Africa's fashion landscape. Additionally, CRAFTED x The Makers Camp will be a panel conversation moderated by Ugonna Orah, featuring Berni Yates of Central Saint Martins and Pettre Taylor. Material Futures will gather circular practitioners for a discussion on transforming environmental waste and overlooked materials into new forms of value through design, experimentation, and material innovation. Each evening, from 6 pm to 9 pm, designer presentations will conclude the day's program.
Featured Designers and Exhibitors
CRAFTED will present work from designers selected for their commitment to circular practice, material innovation, and craft-rooted design. The lineup includes Pettre Taylor, Eso by Liman, Ajanee, Pepperrow, OSHOBOR, Cute-saint, Hertunba, This Is Us, Cynthia Abila, Maliko, NYA, Ywande, Emmy Kasbit, Eki Kere, Tuntunre, Dunsin Crafts, Yoshita, Mitimeth, Nkwo, Wote KI, The OR Foundation (designers), Nakoi, 1967, Africa Collect Textiles, Lilabare, Studio Namnyak, and IGC Fashion.
For information and updates regarding Woven Threads VII, follow @stylehousefiles and @lagosfashionweek on Instagram.
About Style House Files and Its Initiatives
Founded in 2011, Style House Files (SHF) is a leading creative business development agency dedicated to driving innovation, sustainability, and economic growth within the African fashion industry. As a multifaceted ecosystem, SHF serves as a designer incubator, industry connector, and curator of Lagos Fashion Week. With over a decade of experience, SHF has created more than 14,000 jobs and supported over 1,000 fashion businesses.
Woven Threads is Style House Files' platform dedicated to advancing circularity, sustainability, and responsible production across Africa's fashion and textile value chains, remaining a vital pillar of the mission to build a transformative fashion ecosystem on the continent. Lagos Fashion Week (Lagos FW) is a leading platform shaping the future of fashion in Africa through creativity, collaboration, and community. Produced by Style House Files, the event convenes designers, artisans, buyers, consumers, and media from across the continent and beyond to experience the best of African design, serving as a catalyst for enterprise and cultural exchange while driving conversations around innovation, impact, and inclusivity within Africa's creative economy.
