African Fashion’s Competitive Edge Is Cultural Knowledge, Designer Wanda Lephoto Says

South African designer Wanda Lephoto is making the case that Africa’s strongest advantage in fashion may lie beyond cotton, factories and production capacity: in the cultural knowledge, craft traditions and personal histories that give garments meaning.

Lephoto presented that argument during the 2026 Africa Textile Talks, organised by Twyg, and in an interview with Bird Story Agency. His position is that African fashion gains commercial and creative value when designers draw from lived experience, local materials, archives and inherited objects rather than relying on a single marketable idea of what “African fashion” should look like. (allafrica.com)

From materials to meaning

Lephoto’s work treats clothing as more than a product moving through a manufacturing chain. Family photographs, street posters, church garments and traditional objects can become sources for silhouettes, graphics, typography and visual language.

He has described his practice as rooted in design, research, memory and spirituality. A traditional Zulu headrest belonging to his father, marked by years of use, became an example of how an object can carry accumulated history and inform contemporary design. His research project, WL FOUND, examines objects, images and creative work connected to South African history between 1850 and 1994. (allafrica.com)

That approach shifts the question of value. A garment may be commercially important not only because of the fibre, cut or manufacturing process, but also because of the cultural authorship, craftsmanship and story embedded in it.

A wider ecosystem

The report places Lephoto’s argument within Africa’s broader effort to capture more value from textile and clothing industries. Manufacturing capacity can keep more production on the continent, but African-owned brands and designers are also needed to create demand, build distinctive identities and retain more of the value attached to finished products.

Khanyi Mashimbye, creative and cultural industries manager at Afreximbank, said sustainability is a selection criterion for the bank’s Creative Africa Nexus fashion programme. The programme focuses on issues including circularity, artisan livelihoods and lower-impact production. Afreximbank has reported that, by the end of 2024, its CANEX Presents Africa programme had showcased 90 designers from 32 countries at international fashion weeks, with participating brands gaining exposure to buyers in several international markets. (allafrica.com)

Ghanaian label Boyedoe is cited as another example of a brand combining contemporary design with Ghanaian heritage and craftsmanship, including kente, while reworking discarded or unused materials. The label became the first Ghanaian brand to reach the semi-finals of the LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers in 2025, according to the report. (allafrica.com)

Ownership and unanswered questions

The commercial use of cultural heritage also raises questions that the fashion sector cannot avoid. Traditional techniques, symbols, designs and community-held knowledge may be valuable, but conventional intellectual-property systems do not always clearly determine who should receive acknowledgement, permission or economic benefit.

The available report does not establish how much additional revenue, employment or export growth is generated by story-led design. Nor does it resolve how designers and brands should share benefits with artisans and communities whose knowledge informs commercial collections. Those remain important questions as African fashion becomes more visible internationally.

Lephoto’s central proposition is nevertheless clear: originality does not require African designers to abandon local histories in order to compete globally. In his view, personal and collective stories can provide a form of creative value that cannot simply be reproduced elsewhere.

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