Oyetunde Blessing Akangbe and Pepper Row’s “Hip Hop” Collection Is a Confident Swing

Street wear on a Lagos runway is a gamble. The reference pool is deep and well-documented, and the audience knows it. Oyetunde Blessing Akangbe brought her hand to Pepper Row’s hip hop collection at GTCO Fashion Week 2023, and the result had genuine energy and real craft ambition. For the most part, it delivered.

The strongest argument the collection makes is through its fabric mixing. The graffiti-scrawled cargo trousers paired with a patchwork denim jacket showed a clear understanding that streetwear’s visual grammar is accumulation, layering references on top of each other until something new emerges. The writing across those trousers was not decoration. It read like testimony, and it gave the look a texture that felt earned.

The patch-covered leather bomber paired with heavily embellished wide-leg cargo trousers was similarly confident. There was a clear point of view there: maximalism as commitment, not confusion. The studs, the camo panels, the cross hardware at the ankle, all of it spoke the same language even if several people were talking at once. The floral bomber over the leopard print skirt with knee-high boots rounded things out as the collection’s most wearable moment, commercially legible without being lazy.

The one reservation worth naming is consistency. The menswear separates and the balaclava look, while considered, sat at a lower intensity than the collection’s peaks. They filled the lineup without fully extending its argument. In a collection this kinetic, the quieter moments need to carry the same weight as the louder ones. 

That said, Akangbe’s contribution to this work is visible and considered. Pepper Row came to the runway with something to say, and largely said it well.