Copenhagen Fashion Week took place last week and filled the streets with incredible Scandi street style and stand out fashion moments. One memorable show in particular was from IAMISIGO which showcased artisanal handmade garments with a particular focus on preserving traditional and often endangered techniques from Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra in Africa.
Our very own Zeda the Architect was also involved in bringing this show to life on styling and production. The SS26 collection titled Dual Mandate is described as dressing “not just for the world we walk through-but for the world vibrating just beyond it”, which really encompasses this brand’s whole identity. It goes beyond just dressing the body and looks further into how we move through the world.
What has winning the Zalando Visionary Award revealed to you? Not about your brand, but about how the world sees your brand?
It revealed that the world is finally tuning into frequencies we’ve always been emitting, frequencies rooted in ancestral knowledge, material intelligence, and cultural continuity. The recognition was proof that people are beginning to see beyond aesthetics and into intention.
Awards often offer visibility, but what kinds of deeper exchange do you hope to build through Zalando’s support, be it the mentorship, or the network behind the prize?
I’m interested in systems, how this platform can facilitate cross-cultural research, ethical production pathways, and long-term support for material economies across the continent. I hope to exchange not just knowledge, but frameworks for sustainable sovereignty.
Why is it important for you to keep creation close to home, and to centre these ‘forgotten historical narratives’ in a global fashion system that often overlooks them?
Keeping creation close to home allows us to unearth them on our terms, through our hands. It’s an act of resistance, but also of reclamation. We’re not inserting ourselves into fashion’s history, we’re reminding it of its roots.
IAMISIGO often merges ancient techniques with future-forward materials, so, if your SS26 collection had to be understood as a kind of time travel, where exactly is it taking us?
It takes us to the in-between: the liminal space where ancestors meet algorithms, where spirit tech and biotechnology are not separate but symbiotic.
How do you know when something is finished, when your work celebrates anti-finishing? What makes a piece ‘complete’ in your world?
A piece is never really done, it’s paused. It lives, breathes, unravels, and mutates. I consider something ‘complete’ when it begins to communicate back to me, when it starts carrying its own energy into the world. When I’m designing the piece is really only ready when it leaves my hands and gets onto the runway.
Much of your work deals with the spiritual body, so, when designing for the runway, how do you stage something that’s not meant to be seen, but felt?
Nothing is staged. Everything exists just as it has to in this world. It is a question of looking a bit closer. On the continent, things exist now as they were centuries ago. We just have big concrete cities now to mask all of that. But spirituality is still deeply embedded in the land. I think when I visit these spaces and make them, I’m just stirring the pot. What you see in the show is the fumes from all of this spirituality cooking.
Is there a material you’ve encountered recently that frightened or overwhelmed you, creatively, spiritually, or otherwise?
Yes. Tempered glass. So precise, yet fragile. Its false sense of strength mirrored something in me. It forced me to reflect on the illusion of control in creation. It also made me curious about the invisible tensions materials hold.
There’s a recurring theme in your work around portals — to ancestry, to alternative futures. What’s the last personal or creative portal you walked through that changed you?
Abidjan. I fell in love with the city when I went there to work on the collection in May.
Your research spans cities, villages, spirit realms. Where does knowledge travel fastest, and where does it get lost?
It travels fastest through the body. Movement, dance, repetition—those are archives. But knowledge gets lost in translation. When we try to fit fluid systems into rigid structures. Oral traditions don’t fit neatly into Dropbox folders.
What’s the biggest misconception you think the fashion industry still holds about “heritage” or “craft”?
That heritage is static and craft is quaint. Both are living technologies. Craft is not just skill, it’s cosmology. Heritage isn’t backwards-looking. It’s the past, the present and the future. It is strategic memory and the industry often commodifies both without understanding the systems they emerge from.
IAMISIGO often functions as a living archive, and so, are there any stories, voices, or techniques you feel responsible for protecting right now?
Yes, there are. Too many to mention, and I’m not sure I can fully articulate a complete response right now, because the responsibility is a profound one. But I carry with me the stories of women weavers whose hands remember more than books ever could. For example, the oral dyeing rituals passed down in hushed tones. The philosophies embedded in folding, wrapping, and stitching, acts often dismissed as domestic, but deeply intellectual. I feel responsible for preserving these not just through documentation, but through activation. By centring them in contemporary contexts, and ensuring they are not just seen, but valued, protected, and paid.
You once said your work is about removing the construct of borders. What new border are you currently trying to dissolve, and why?
The border between the spiritual and the technological. They are not opposites. I’m interested in coding as ceremony, in data as an ancestor. Dissolving that binary could unlock an entirely new way of designing, and of being.
