In recent years, Africa has been a growing hotspot for fashion. From luxury couture brands to smaller fast fashion brands, there is a growing consumer trend on the continent for fashion Made-in-Africa, particularly among young people the under-25s account for 50% of the continent’s total population and among the burgeoning middle class; which make up more than 35% of the population. In Nigeria, brands like Rendoll, The Ladymaker, Hertunba and DNA produce stellar statement pieces, making waves locally and internationally while smaller brands like Seta The Label hold down the ready-to-wear scene at home. However, as Nigeria’s fashion scene continues to grow and gain global relevance, a few bumps in the road have surfaced; one of which is the growing concern with pricing and affordability.
Despite these strides in global fashion which have seen celebrities like Beyonce wearing Nigerian designs, Nigeria’s local mass market is slowly being priced out of her ready-to-wear industry as the costs of these pieces steadily skyrocket and are leaning more towards the spending brackets of affluent Nigerians and those in the diaspora than everyday consumers.
As acknowledged by Omoyemi Akerele of Lagos Fashion Week, “Africans want to wear Africa. It’s really beautiful to see because it hasn’t always been like this. When we launched Lagos Fashion Week, we had to create a campaign around Buy Nigerian, Buy African just to encourage people to start buying Nigerian or buying African. But fast forward, a decade after, that’s all people want to wear. The only challenge is, can they afford it? Because African fashion unfortunately comes at a price. It comes at a price because of the problems or the bottlenecks that exist when it comes to producing African fashion.”
For context, a single item from DNA’s racks can go for as high as 450,000 naira, a piece from The Ladymaker up to 500,000 naira and Seta The Label sells dresses for up to 90 pounds each. This kind of pricing may be understandable for luxury or couture brands, but it becomes deeply concerning when smaller ‘fast fashion’ brands adopt similar price points. For the average Nigerian, with a monthly salary ranging between 60,000 to 70,000 naira, such costs are not only alarming but plainly unconscionable. Social media uproar and general discontentment with the fashion market begs the question of why local ready to wear brands are so unaffordable.
The answers to this question are centred more on the Nigerian economy and Nigerian fashion as an industry, rather than the actions of individual brands. The factors responsible for the outrageous prices span across the value chain, from farmers and textile mills that provide raw materials to manufacturing, marketing, and logistics.
In UNESCO’s 2023 Report, The Fashion Sector In Africa: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities for Growth, the lack of structured investments and infrastructure in the fashion industry was cited as a major reason for the exorbitant prices of clothing items when they hit the market. The reason for the lack of structure is mostly cultural – for years, tailoring has been an informal skill, with several tailors working out of small shops, designing and sewing clothes themselves without any fanfare, a large team or a brand name. The concept of fashion houses and brands with identifiable trademarks is a fairly new trend.
Although Nigeria is a huge producer of raw materials such as cotton which should ideally make textile manufacturing cheaper, there is a consistent and significant loss in the potential economic value of crops because of a lack of adequate infrastructure to process raw materials locally. Only about 5 to 10% of the cotton grown in Nigeria is processed in the country, creating a dependency on imported foreign materials such as textiles and yarns, which are subject to inflation and fluctuating prices. This results in additional costs, increased production times and inevitably, an increase in the retail price of the items when they are finally produced.
Beyond fibres and textiles, the lack of modern and well-equipped manufacturing facilities also hinders the garment sector. While most global brands have factories in China or Bangladesh for instance, most Nigerian brands manufacture in-house and struggle with outdated machinery and limited automation, leading to lower production capacity, longer waiting times, and reduced cost efficiencies. Skilled artisans are hard to come by and the high cost of electricity, transport, labour and overhead costs also makes production expensive. This is true for both luxury brands and fast-fashion brands, with the increasing inflation and worsening economy making the already Herculean task of producing quality, affordable clothes in the country even harder. As expressed by designer Desiree Iyama, “When you consider the cost of production, it is almost impossible to make something high quality and affordable in today’s Nigeria.”
Wani, owner of NiwaRTW (a relatively small brand) whose pricing ranges between 20,000 and 160,000 naira points out that alongside fixed costs such as rent and machinery, a big determinant of pricing is the cost of the fabric used to make the clothes – this includes linings, fusings and embellishments. “I sew with different materials; Adire, Aso-oke, crepe and so on. I do all my market runs myself, I source the fabric myself. If I’m going to sew with Aso-oke, it will cost more than an outfit I will sew with Adire, for example.” Creating between 3 to 6 outfits per day, she explains that she needs to add a profit margin to the prices of the clothes she makes, to earn some money back and to offset the costs involved in creating the items. “Packaging is also a part of it,” she adds, stating that each order is individually packaged and that this contributes to the cost of her clothes.
Odio Oseni, founder of Odio Mimonet, a haute couture brand whose prices range between 180,000 and 3,350,000 naira emphasises that labour costs also carry weight when determining the pricing of clothes. Skilled labour costs much more than unskilled labour, and the amount of time that goes into crafting each item is also a factor to consider. She says that it is difficult to have a set profit margin because the cost of production is often higher than profit. “Most businesses are difficult to run in West Africa, not just fashion. We need to improve our infrastructure, it’s a work in progress, but we [Nigerian fashion brand owners] are trying; it’s something we have to do for our country.”
Beyond the difficulties in manufacturing and production, several Nigerian brands suffer from mistaken brand identity. Our fashion industry is still in its infancy, and as such, several brands are not sure where they fall on the everyday to luxury scale. With the rise of global brands such as Kai Collective, DyeLab and Rendoll, whose visibility has been increased with the internet and social media, Nigerian designers have been influenced to look toward the global market for demand as opposed to the local market (which is increasingly seeing fashion as a luxury competing with everyday essentials like food) and ready to wear brands now erroneously market themselves as luxury or couture brands with prices to match.
But couture is less about slapping exorbitant price tags on a piece of fabric, and more about the craftsmanship that goes into a truly unique piece of clothing, so while there are several couture designers with justifiable price tags and we concede that the cost of production in the country generally is high, this cannot be used as a gateway for mid-level brands and “Instagram vendors” to market ordinary items as luxury and sell them at ridiculous price points. Brands like Studio Bonnitta and ShopBawsty have been able to create quality clothing while maintaining prices that befit a mid-level ready-to-wear brand and although their pieces are by no means cheap, they have certainly been able to walk the line between profitable and affordable without compromising on quality.
Regularizing the fashion industry is possible, particularly if the government recognizes that this overwhelming pricing trend is an economic issue and introduces new policies and solutions to address this. Investment in proper infrastructure is the most obvious step to take towards improving the Nigerian fashion industry. This, alongside attention to market demands on the part of Nigerian fashion brands will help these brands understand and serve their markets better.
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