There are multiple ways you could interpret IAMISIGO. It is radically innovative. Yet it is traditional. It is speculative, while being deeply human. It is luxury, and it is anti-luxury. This wearable art brand – based between Lagos, Nairobi and Accra – cannot be confined by a single interpretation: it is all of these descriptors, and more.
Creative director Bubu Ogisi creates visually stimulating fashion with layers of meaning intended to decolonise minds and adorn bodies. Last month’s IMISIGO showcase at Copenhagen Fashion Week exemplified this.
As the winner of Zalando’s Visionary Award 2025, she received a grant and production support for the show. Before presenting her Spring/Summer 2026 collection, Dual Mandate, Bubu told journalist Ezreen Benissan that she would produce an unforgettable showcase, one that “forever holds space within Copenhagen Fashion Week”. Bubu and her team of collaborators achieved this with Elle magazine calling IAMISIGO the breakout brand of Copenhagen Fashion Week.
Bubu is known for working with artisanal communities across the African continent to create materials and accessories for her collections. Ahead of Copenhagen Fashion Week, she travelled to Cape Town to collect hats for the show from one of her collaborators, milliner Crystal Birch. While she was in town, Bubu and I met at the Clarke’s Bar and Dining Room on Bree Street to talk about her upcoming show.
She says, “Crystal is so obviously in line with our materialism. We decided to work with size, and used raffia, plastic and sisal. We layered different hats together to create volume.”
Settling into our conversation, Bubu explains that for ten years IAMISIGO has explored how the body exists through three dimensions. Now she is focusing on exploring four dimensions: body, space, time and soul. “We’re also going against over-consumption.” And, she says, “A lot of the pieces reflect borderless ideologies, and reframe the idea of tradition… We’re also interested in what the middleman between the spirit world and the physical world would visually look in this world.”
Bubu always starts her design with materials. “I look at what we’ve already worked with in previous collections, and decide how and what we bring to the next lesson. How do we now deconstruct and break all these materials down and accumulate them to create another celestial being or entity?”
For SS26, Bubu expands on narratives of indigenous textile practices and her previous material developments. For instance, this year cotton, sisal, raffia and jute are used with plastic and luminous metals like copper, brass, stainless steel and aluminium. “We’re playing with new ideas by combining materials. We wove cotton and metal together which creates amazing form,” she says.
“There was a lot of hammering of metals to create shiny textures,” she says. “We used copper and brass which have spiritual and healing qualities. These metal materials are like armour, and heal your gut and the sacred chakras in your body.”
Bubu says that she introduced these metals to illustrate a metaphysical query. “How can the body exist as a bio-electrical device that functions and creates while healing itself at the same time?”
The choice of colours in her collection mirror the “frequencies we radiate”. She says, “We have a lot of blues, a lot of yellows and off white. Black is the staple. There is silver, and we now have army green, brown hues and coffee brown.”
The concept of duality is reflected in the title of the collection, Dual Mandate. This is a reference to a book published in 1922 called The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa by Lord Frederick Lugard who was high commissioner of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria from 1900 to 1906 and governor-general of Nigeria from 1914 to 1919. The book is a detailed description and motivation of Lugard’s colonial policy that supports Britain’s extraction of Africa’s resources while promoting that it aids the development of the colonies.
The IAMISIGO pre-show press release states that this colonial doctrine holds opposing ideals side by side: “exploitation and uplift, commerce and civilisation”. The SS26 collection reclaims that phrase, softens its violence, and turns it inward: “What if a dual mandate could be about self-preservation and perception? Protection and openness?”
Bubu’s Dual Mandate reframes “what it means to wear, to protect, to remember” during deeply troubling times. In closing, Bubu talks about fashion in a time of war, and the concepts of violence and harmony. “You know, my work is always a silent protest to post and neo-colonialism. If anything happens to us now, this is the collection that I’ll be wearing.”
Dual Mandate is a fashion collection that protects and heals. Not only the physical, but the metaphysical, too.
- Feature image: James Cochrane
- All other images embedded in the copy above: Goldie Williams Vericain
Show video
Dual Mandate Credits
Backstage team. Image: Holly-Marie Cato
Principal creative team
- Creative Director – Bubu Ogisi
- Brand and Production Lead – Tushar Hathiramani
- Collection Stylist – KK Obi
- Creative Assistant – Maissa De Oliveira
- Production and Styling Assistant – Zeda the Architect
- PR and Communications Liaison – Arieta M Barg
- Art Direction (Sound, Set and Re-see) – Roxane Mbanga
Fashion & garment
- Influencer Fashion Stylist – Ellen Elias
- Hats – The Real Crystal Birch
Casting
- Emma Mattell – Director MA World Group & Emma Mattell Casting
- Oliwia Jancerowicz – Senior Assistant
- Ananya Nisbet – Assistant
Models
- Alberte Uma Kabongo
- Adda Overgaard
- Anja Pulsen
- Chen Chien Yu
- Victoria Aleng
- William Albrechtsen
- Alma Darouiche
- Kimberly Green
- Aleece Lee
- Ari Lin
- Isra Asved Shabazz
- Katrine Nørskau
- Sarah Konge Owino
- Signe Kjær
- Ashanti Mcgruder
- Aida Sowe
- Cheikh Loum
- Emerson Pereira
- Josva Tind
- Ebyaan Omar
- Hyekyuong Shin
- Nyaueth Riam
- Ilethia Riva Sharp
- Yaqub Gabeyré
- Elena Nocciolini
- Ananya Liva
- Mali Majuec Mayuom
- Molly Efionayi
- Maggie Ding
- Freya Boldsen
- Menelik Christensen
- Carina Misiak
- Hannah Ravn
- Samy Nzomukunda
Hair and makeup
- Hair – Sara Mathiasson
- Hair Assistant – Hawa Baldeh
- Makeup Team – Tina Khatri, Ari T
- Make Up Assistants – Shani (1st assistant), Simmi, Tinna, Sigu, Ryoko, Elisavet, Juho
- Nails – Esther Huong
Backstage & show support
Backstage Volunteers – Abraham Asafew, Valdemar Barg, Jesse Barasa, Ngozi Elobuike, Thiravigah Thiraviarajah, Thiravisha Thiraviarajah
Volunteers – Clara Murphy, Ngozi Elobuike, Grâce Bomoua, Abi Long, Ellie Butler, Zoe Lee, Benn Fredrik Waigand, Marcela Żak, Pieter Maes, Ann-Sophie Fuchs
CPHFW Interns – Mirna Dirawi, Lea Goettsch, Montserrat Garcia, Celina Calabrese
Sound & film production
Sound Design – Phantom Wizard
Zalando Visionary Award Documentary and Film Production Team – Dawasuya, Timi Ajani, Moise Youmba, Tony Longe, Max Scibb
Visual documentation
Photographers / Videographers (BTS) – Adrian Molina, Holly Catto, Miriam Kamba
Special thanks to:
Organic Basics , Love Uffot and the team at Sigurd Copenhagen.
