A husband-and-wife design duo were inspired by a chair. A simple, curved wooden design with red upholstery fabric that survived decades in Osione Itegboje’s family home was formative to their Nigerian brand This is Us. What is unique about this chair—one that has endured the test of time in a way the newer products Osione and his wife, Oroma Cookey-Gam, were considering for their newlywed home would not—is that it is Nigerian-made.

For much of the designers’ lives, Nigerian-made had often meant substandard or low quality. They grew up in a culture where everyone has close relationships with local tailors, frequently commissioning custom-made clothing for ceremonies and events, but Osione says that many of these traditional outfits include foreign materials like Dutch wax prints or Swiss lace. It’s so common for Nigerian design to incorporate foreign elements that when Oroma first started a fashion line of her own, she planned to travel to Turkey to produce white shirts—pregnancy prevented her travels.

And then the simple red chair intervened. It was proof of a once-reliable industry. “We were already talking about locally made,” says Osione. “So, we started asking more questions.” The result is less a brand and more a research project—a mission to “test the theory that it’s possible to make things of high quality in Nigeria,” says Osione.

Husband-and-wife design duo Osione Itegboj and Oroma Cookey-Gam founded the Nigerian brand This is Us. Photo: Nwando Ebeledike

Finding local cotton was a natural place to start—not only because it had been the fibre intended for Oroma’s white shirt venture but also because Nigeria has a rich cotton tradition. Before the discovery of crude oil, cotton was one of Nigeria’s greatest exports. In the 1970s and ’80s, Nigeria’s cotton sector employed over 450,000 people across 180 textile mills, with 600,000 farmers growing. By the 2010s, when Oroma and Osione began their project, “this had severely declined because many artisans stopped practising their crafts and there was a wave of mass-produced product imports,” according to The Conversation.

This decline in local textile manufacturing meant Oroma and Osione had to travel across the country to find the few mills and artisans still working in textiles. “In the southern part of Nigeria, there’s a town where they do adire dyeing. We visited a friend who has a brand called Post Imperial and he recommended that we go to speak to the dyers,” says Osione. From there, they were introduced to locally produced cotton from a northern town called Funtua—which would become their hero material.

“When we saw it, we were like, ‘Oh, this isn’t so bad, you know. We can do something with it.’ So, after that trip, we were very excited. And this is how we came up with the term Funtua Nigerian Made Cotton. We were just so proud to find something that is called Nigerian cotton,” says Osione.

But the couple didn’t stop there—it was essential for them to ensure it was truly locally made. This led to an investigation into the supply chain. “We wanted to see where this cotton is made and where it comes from… We started asking our contacts, and someone pointed us to the Institute of Agricultural Research.”

On the set of REBORN, a story of spiritual awakening. Photo: Ayanfe Olarinde

Established in 1922, Nigeria’s Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR) focuses on the improvement, protection and production of local crops. “They’re responsible for all the seeds in Nigeria,” says Osione. At the IAR, they gained a deeper understanding of the cotton seed—its origins in America, how it had been modified over time, and the local farmers cultivating it. “And within a 50-mile radius, there’s a ginnery where they separate the seeds from the cotton wool, and then there’s a Funtua textile mill which converts that into fabric. We got to observe the movement of seed from IAR to Funtua: from the farms, to the gin, to the textile mill, and finally into fabric.”

Armed with this oversight and understanding of their material, the design work could finally begin. Oroma had initially been interested in marble dyeing techniques, which had first led them on their farm-to-fibre journey. Along the way, they discovered Kano, a town that still practised centuries-old indigo dyeing techniques. Indigo fabrics have been a mainstay of African textiles, with adire—achieved through wax-resist dyeing—being one of the most well-known. However, the old-school dye pits and natural dyes used by the Kano artisans were incompatible with the paraffin wax commonly used to achieve adire prints, which worked best with synthetic dyes.

The Kano artisans relied on tie-dyeing techniques, which didn’t produce the same intricate, hand-drawn patterns as adire. Meanwhile, Oroma and Osione began experimenting with Japanese shibori techniques, which use folding and tying to create patterns in dyed fabric. Looking to Asian practices made sense, given that several Asian cultures also have long-held indigo cloth traditions—one of many connecting threads between African and Asian designs.

This is US has built a community that wear their clothes with love 

This cross-cultural experimentation led to a breakthrough in their practice. “One of the dyers had this idea that we could use cassava paste.” By using cassava instead of paraffin wax, the artisans could draw intricate, detailed patterns and motifs onto the fabric. This technique is similar to flour paste resist dyeing used in other communities around the world. It allowed This Is Us to stay true to an African design language while developing a natural and sustainable practice.

Yet the very challenges that make producing in Nigeria so difficult are what have shaped Oroma and Osione into such conscious, thoughtful designers with a devoted community

In a free market, this level of intense planning, research, and experimentation would be viewed as a hindrance to profitability and competitiveness. Yet the very challenges that make producing in Nigeria difficult are what have shaped Oroma and Osione into such conscious, thoughtful designers with a devoted community.

Designers must embed stories into pieces that people will live in

Of course, there is still the added challenge of selling a product. Much of This Is Us’s offering is deceptively simple—a selection of timeless, classic, and trans-seasonal pieces that don’t immediately reveal the years of research and experimentation behind them. Unlike art, which can be pondered and philosophised upon, clothing must still be functional. Designers must embed stories into pieces that people will live in.

“When you’re doing research and you have all this information, you want to tell all of it, but you realise maybe people aren’t interested in all of that. They just want a nice shirt or something that is sustainably made,” Osione says. “How do we do it with some balance? I think where we found success is that there are certain codes and markers of the brand that we use to infuse some of these stories. We talk a little bit about designing slowly. If you look at our label, we put some of our values there. This idea of wearing it with love, getting rid of it with love. How do we take those ideas and activate them? One thing we’ve done from the beginning is a re-dye drive, where people can experience the dyeing process and get their hands dirty.”

The Palm Print Kimono, made from a melange of print experiments, including tie-dye and hand-drawn cassava resist, using This Is Us’s 100% cotton from Funtua, Katsina.

This Is Us will continue to build on their story by expanding and nurturing their community. The re-dye drive brings their customers directly into the process, offering insider insight into the expansive world of their garments. They’ve just completed a pop-up at Cape Town’s Merchants on Long and have plans to visit Johannesburg next.

There is no denying the aesthetic value of African fashion, but this isn’t just a space for artists. To survive and thrive in this industry, we need engineers, problem-solvers, and philosophers. While artists have the freedom to pose questions to society, the best designers accept the quest to answer them. Perceived shortcomings and limitations become opportunities. For This Is Us, these challenges have been opportunities to reconnect with heritage, expand knowledge, and find innovative solutions.

 

• This is US is currently available at Merchants on Long at 34 Long Street in Cape Town
• Find out more about This Is Us on their Instagram
• Feature image by Nwando Ebeledike
• Discover more designer resources on The Hub