Abiola Onabule, is a London-based fashion designer with a master’s degree in womenswear from Central Saint Martins. Her work draws inspiration from her Nigerian cultural heritage and through the stories and lives of women. A 2020-2021 Designer-in-Residence at the Design Museum in London, Abiola has been researching the craft of adire, the indigo-dyed cloth typically made in southwestern Nigeria by Yoruba women, using a variety of resist-dyeing techniques. She has created a contemporary womenswear collection and collaborated on a new film that presents this craft as nurturing and sustainable, highlighting the importance of craft and artistry as acts of care, love and holistic support. The cloth is used as a storytelling device to weave together and preserve the rich culture, complex histories and voices that belong to Nigeria and its diaspora.

This look [to the right] has been designed using an adire alabare technique, where fabric is stitched together, dyed and then the stitches taken out. The dip-dyed trousers are decorated with intersecting lines (often a key aspect of adire eleko designs) and echoing the dyers’ indigo stained hands in the form of indigo dip-dyed gloves.

This piece [to the left] makes reference to a Yoruba adire pattern that symbolises liberty, using a stencil technique often used in the adire craft. It was created using the cassava starch adire eleko technique, which resists the indigo dye, where it is placed on the cloth, giving a much cleaner finish than that of wax batik resist.

This piece [to the right] has been created by redyeing upcycled velvet with indigo and applying a ‘tie-and-dye’ method. It makes reference to the historical use of velvet and brocade materials for adire in the 1930s. The attached gloves refer to the dyers’ indigo-stained hands and the drapes and gathers are a nod to the folds of gele (headdress), buba (top) and wrapper (skirt).