Building a brand in the Nigerian fashion industry is known to be hectic because of the hurdles you are likely to face. Quality in your products is merely an entry cost, it doesn’t guarantee your growth.
We discussed with one of the co-founders of Pith Africa, Cosmas Ojemen, talking about the brand, it’s history, past collections, hurdles he’s had to face, and his plans for the future of the brand.
Can you give a brief description about yourself?
My name is Cosmas Ojemen, I am a style director based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Can you give me a brief history of your brand?
Pith Africa is a dual-sex fashion house, founded in Lagos, Nigeria by myself, Cosmas Ojemen, serving as the Creative Director, Head of Operations and Style Director Emeka Anazodo, and Artistic Director Adedayo Laketu. Pith began operations in January 2017 and has since then released two mini-collections under an ongoing fashion project called ‘Dilly’.
Dilly 1: A beginning (Acceptance)
Our first mini-collection features: pants, tops, an experimental trench coat, and a mini gown which are all made with a brown suede fabric.
We created this collection to find an identity within ourselves; hence, we used a color palette that felt natural in contrast to our melanin skin, and designs minimal to the primitive state of things around us.
We asked ourselves who we are, making the designs simple but technical in a way that sees African style prevail within the African struggle. We leave a statement that fashion can be a way to find one’s voice within the chaos of life.
Dilly 2: Streetwear.
Our second mini-collection features: a onesie, skirt, top, cargo-inspired pants, "a knockoff Tee’’, one strap bags, and a mule.
While developing our second mini-collection through the lens of Virgil Albloh and Demna Gvasalia, streetwear’s transition into high fashion became mainstream, and it sprinkled down to Africa with the birth of African streetwear brands like WafflesNCream and Modus Vivendii.
Inspired by this new direction of fashion (one fueled with freedom, rawness, and youthful vigor) our creative director conceptualized his design around it; infusing zips, raw cuts, pockets, and prints to bring about our own interpretation of streetwear.
We’re current working on Dilly 3 and I guess all I can say is the campaign and film we’re dropping later will encapsulate everything we want to say with Dilly 3 and the on going conversation.
We’ve dropped a few pieces from Dilly 3 but it’s all coming together to a bigger story.
Describe your brand in five words
Youth. Imagery. Community. Africa. Individualism.
Describe what your brand offers
We create according to what we feel at the moment. Dilly is an on-going conversation about the brand’s growth and the environment we’re growing around. We’re not a streetwear brand, or a luxurious brand, or your typical fashion brand. We’re Pith, we want to touch on the heart and pulse of the African style, current identity and subcultures as well as the culture itself. We create products, it could be a bag, up cycled denims, a onsie, a two piece for women, a dinner gown, a tee, furniture, skateboard, rings, to us fashion is about taking what we see and giving it back with an elevated taste level. Someone once said we’re sorta like a mix of Zara and LV, bringing products that speak to what we stand for.
We try to be as sustainable as possible as well as using local crafts men in our production processes.
Who is your brand for? Who isn’t it for?
Defining who our brand is can feel like a way of boxing things or people out. We create products, fashion products as well as abstract products. It’s inclusive for everyone that really fucks with the idea of what we stand for. For those following our growth this year, there’s a sub layer of story telling that I feel they relate to apart from the pieces just being cool, and refreshing. We’re going to keep on pushing that, and whoever feels Pith Is Life, we’re always happy to welcome you.
It’ll all come together when we put together Dilly 3.
What does your brand stand for?
It’s stands for a documentation of what our current timeline is. I feel just like every form of art, fashion is a sort of documentation to the times. We create by putting a hyper lens on different conversations happening all around us, it’s about putting a focus on young Lagos, Nigeria, Africa through fashion and imagery. There’s a lot to explore and show here, we want to do that with cool ass products with high taste levels, and at the heart of it all we’re strongly moved by the voice of the youth.
What has been the biggest hurdle you’ve faced so far as a growing brand?
For now it’s definitely financing and and the terrible fashion infrastructure that doesn’t have aids for independent brands like us. We’ve been running Pith ourselves but we’re hoping to grow bigger before the year ends and seek investment to help us expand.
We’ve had an amazing three quarters this year and we want to focus on just turning that into more positives.
As you see it, what are the biggest issues facing black-owned growing fashion and lifestyle brands in the world today?
I’ll say more inclusivity and it shouldn’t all be about the hype. We should really push our own community, and grow our own brands so we can respect our own brands as much as an Italian brand. See how good brands like Teflar, Off-White, A-Cold-Wall, Wales Boner, they all stuck to their values and did their thing.
The fashion scene is seeing beyond its racist views now and allowing more black creatives into the industry but we still need more!
What are your future goals for your brand and fashion in its entirety?
We want to be the biggest fashion brand in Africa and give back to the community. We also want to create a global presence from Africa to the world. There’s also a dream of collaborating with Nike, Virgil, Metallic, Patta, and a few brands in Lagos like WafflesNCream, This Is Us, Kerele.
We want to push every dimension.
What’s next for your brand? - a new collection, a pop-up, collaboration, what’s next for you?
We’re working on a lot right now but I guess we can say, expect more products, more campaigns/films and we might throw in a pop-up.
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