Olakanye Modupe is a young designer from Nigeria who despite all odds went all out to showcase her new crochet collection at the Nigerian Student Fashion and Design Week 2018 – Nigeria’s leading fashion event platform for discovering raw fashion talents and industry newcomers. And to her biggest surprise, she won the Womenswear designer award.

The graduate of Biology Education from Adeyemi College of Education completed her national youth service program a few days ago in Kaduna and at some point, she almost gave up the idea of showcasing due to some challenges she has been facing as a youth corps member.

She started fashion designing while in secondary school. “It all started when I was depressed in my secondary school days, I’m the introvert type. It got to a point I wanted to end my life but God saved me through crocheting. I’d crochet some little projects then just to keep me from idleness and negative thoughts. Gradually I realised I wanted to be unique and creative in making use of crochet, so I developed myself in it and took it to the next level” she said.

Modupe heard about the Nigerian Student Fashion and Design Week three years ago while she was searching online for some outstanding fashion weeks in Nigeria where she could showcase her designs. She was very impressed and inspired by the NSFDW project and how various designers have risen through the platform, so she decided to take her time to perfect her skills before coming out.

During the Nigerian Student Fashion and Design Week showcase, she gave her collection all she could, just because she wanted to make a statement through Crochets but didn’t expect to win any prize. She was highly impressed with other designers collections.

To her it was such a wonderful experience, showcasing alongside outstanding young designers who have come from different parts of the country. “I was so glad people appreciated my kind of fashion, it was such a huge moment for me and memory I’ll cherish forever,” she said.

To her, “the Nigeria Fashion Industry is a massive and competitive one. It’s very challenging and takes a lot of hardworking, good content, uniqueness and so on. Electricity is one of the major factors affecting this industry. In addition, the government is doing not so well supporting emerging designers”. And she also believes that financial support is one of her major challenges while down pricing is another huge challenge she faces as an emerging designer.

We look forward to seeing great achievements from the Modhan brand.

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