The Return of Ankara: How Nigerian Fashion Designers Are Reclaiming a Fabric That the World Once Tried to Own

Nigerian fashion designers are leading a global movement to reclaim Ankara fabric as authentically African, pushing back against decades of cultural appropriation and Western fashion industry dominance.

Walk through the Balogun Market in Lagos on any Saturday morning and you will see it in abundance  Ankara fabric, stacked floor to ceiling in every conceivable pattern, a riot of colour and geometry that feels almost aggressively alive. The vendors hawk it with the practiced rhythm of people who know they are selling something the world has recently decided it cannot get enough of.

But here is the thing about Ankara that most of the world's fashion press has only recently begun to reckon with: this fabric, so deeply associated with African identity  with weddings and naming ceremonies, with the way a grandmother ties her headwrap or an uncle shows up to a funeral in full regalia — was not originally African at all. It was manufactured in the Netherlands. And for a long time, a Dutch company called Vlisco dominated the global market for what it called "African wax print," selling fabric designed in Europe to African consumers who had come to regard it as their own cultural inheritance.

That irony has not been lost on Nigerian fashion designers. And in recent years, a growing movement within Nigeria's creative industry has been working  quietly, deliberately, and with increasing commercial success  to change both the economics and the narrative around African fabric.

"When I started my label, I knew I wanted to work with Ankara," said Funmi Adeyemi, a Lagos-based designer whose brand, Owó, has been showing at Lagos Fashion Week for the past four years. "But I also knew I wanted to work with fabric that was actually made here, not just printed here. The whole point is for the value chain to be African."

Adeyemi is among a cohort of Nigerian designers who have been deliberately sourcing from domestic textile producers a diminished but not dead industry centred in Aba, Kano, and Abeokuta while simultaneously modernising Ankara's silhouettes for a younger, globally connected consumer. Their work sits at the intersection of cultural pride and commercial ambition, and it has been finding an audience far beyond Lagos.

The global appetite for African fashion — broadly, and Ankara specifically  has been growing for several years, accelerated in part by the visibility of African designers on international runways, the influence of African popular culture through music and film, and a post-2020 cultural conversation about representation and authenticity in the fashion industry. When Beyoncé wore pieces from Nigerian designers during the visual album Black Is King, the effect on global demand was immediate and measurable.

But visibility has also brought complications. Western fast fashion brands have repeatedly appropriated Ankara prints without attribution, without licensing, and without any economic benefit flowing back to African designers or fabric producers. In 2022, a viral social media campaign called #WhoMadeMyAnkara called out several major European retailers for selling "African print" garments manufactured in Asia at prices that undercut African producers.

Visblog spoke to three Nigerian designers who said they had had their original print designs copied by international brands within months of debut, with no legal recourse available to them under current international intellectual property frameworks.

"The conversation about protecting African design is still very young," said Dr. Kemi Olagbaju, a cultural economist at the Pan-Atlantic University. "We have not built the legal or institutional infrastructure to defend what we create at scale. That is the next frontier."

In the meantime, the cultural reclamation is happening through the market itself. Young Nigerians  particularly those in the 18-to-35 demographic  are choosing Ankara with a new kind of intentionality. It is not just about wearing something beautiful. It is about wearing something that means something, in a world that often profits from African culture while remaining indifferent to African people.

At a pop-up market in Victoria Island last month, vendors reported that interest in locally designed and sourced Ankara pieces had increased significantly compared to a year ago, with customers asking specific questions about where the fabric was made and who designed the patterns  questions that would have been unusual even five years ago.

"People are waking up," said Adeyemi, smoothing a piece of deep indigo Ankara over a dress form in her studio. "They want to know the story. And the story, when you tell it right, is extraordinary."

Outside, in the markets and studios and sewing rooms of Lagos, that story is being written one pattern at a time. It is colourful, complicated, and very much alive.