7/22/2019

Rising Stars: Wekaforé Maniu Jibril

Wekaforé Maniu Jibril, a Barcelona based Nigerian designer, discovered fashion at the age of ten when his father taught him how to restitch and press-iron his school trousers. Four years later, after helping his mother in her textile workshop in Lagos, Jibril began designing and making clothes and selling them to his classmates. At 24, following a move to Barcelona which helped him develop his namesake label, Wekaforé, Jibril has designed collections taking inspiration from various cultural and musical influences including The Nuba tribe of South Sudan, Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, and masked Nigerian folk musician Lagbaja, and created ready-to-wear lines, fusing 60s and 70s silhouettes with an Afrofuturist edge. Outside fashion, the multi-disciplinary creative also fronts a musical project, Egosex, and runs party series, Voodoo Club, which aims to celebrate the African diaspora and create a ‘contemporary African rave experience’ in Barcelona. This year, Jibril’s label launched its Spirit 003 campaign, featured in i-D magazine, showcasing more of what he describes as ‘Afro-primitive-futuristic functional-disco activewear’ designs.

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