Ay Stitch Explores African Identity, Heritage In Kaftanship SS25

 
By Patrick Ezema
 
In Ay Stitch’s artistic evolution as a fashion designer, the Nigerian designer born Ayomikun Oluwadamilola Okundare, unearths a pristine construct within her fashionscape: African identity is structure first.
 
The Nigerian Kaftan finds its roots in Northern Africa, where the Hausa wore them as a fitting menswear piece that symbolized authority, while prioritizing function as a casual everyday wear. Today, as contemporary designers like Ay Stitch upscale their design concept, the Kaftan has become a symbolic luxury menswear piece that shines for its bold minimalism.
 
As a two-piece menswear woven in cobalt black hues, Kaftanship SS25 soars with its tactile surface, angular silhouette and intricate form. Its rectangular torso, three-quarter sleeves and minimalist waist shaping elevate the structure into a relaxed fit, giving the Kaftan its modern, urban outlook. Ay Stitch has, in her hitherto collections, proven that brilliant minimalist-luxe designs do not necessarily need to rely on heavy ornamentation to achieve such status; her collections, especially Kaftanship, instead, rely on architectural tailoring and subtle Afrocentric embellishments to announce presence and form.
 
In Kaftanship SS25, Ay Stitch embeds a circular appliqué that becomes the design’s conceptual focus. Ay Stitch’s north star in her design is to emphasize subtle indigenous imagery, and the applique strongly resembles traditional regal beads — a strong marker of pre-colonial menswear fashion. In her design, she evokes memory, identity and heritage with a simple-but-delicate approach like the applique and tactile surface, improving the overall feel, look and aesthetic of the design.
 
In most art spaces, the circle represents unity or completeness, and Ay Stitch translates that concept through the applique, which becomes an emblem of sorts of the same concept. It’s also a common practice among traditional African designs, especially tribal wear, which heavily relies on abstractionism and motifs to convey folklore and identity. In Kaftanship SS25, Ay Stitch revisits this discipline, without losing focus on her signature architectural tailoring blueprint, which is visible in her other work like Simplicitas SS25 and Made of Man SS25.
 
Overall, balance, culture and form sit at the heart of Ay Stitch’s Kaftanship SS25. The design feels like a conversation around elegance and identity, reinterpreting the Kaftan as a luxury menswear regalia that finds its soul in structure and form.
 
As an audacious fashion designer, Ay Stitch’s work unfurls a more structural interpretation of identity within fashion practice. Her design philosophy emphasizes cultural heritage. In her approach, silhouette, proportion and textile behavior become the means by which identity is communicated, while herr retains restraint in following a more conventional luxe-adorning approach – a practice which encourages heritage as design knowledge within the Africa fashion ecosystem.