Lagos Fashion Week has been awarded the 2025 Earthshot Prize for its groundbreaking approach to sustainable design, marking a historic win for African fashion and its influence on the global move toward circularity.
Lagos Fashion Week has been named one of the five £1 million 2025 Earthshot Prize winners, marking a defining moment for African fashion and sustainability on the global stage. Recognized in the “Build a Waste-Free World” category, the platform joins an elite cohort that includes Brazil’s re.green, Colombia’s City of Bogotá, the High Seas Treaty, and Bangladesh’s Friendship. The acknowledgment places Lagos Fashion Week — a movement as much as an event — at the forefront of a growing shift toward circularity within fashion’s most influential capitals.
“When I founded The Earthshot Prize in 2020, we had a ten-year goal; to make this the decade in which we transformed our world for the better,” HRH Prince William, Founder and President of The Earthshot Prize, said during the announcement ceremony in Rio. “We set out to tackle environmental issues head-on and make real, lasting changes that would protect life on Earth. It was a mission driven by the kind of extraordinary optimism we have felt here tonight, from these innovators. Their work is the proof we need that progress is possible. Their stories are the inspiration that gives us courage. And there’s a great deal we can learn from their determination, their vision for scale, and their unyielding belief that we can create a better world.”
Founded in 2011 by Omoyemi Akerele, Lagos Fashion Week has evolved from a regional showcase into one of the world’s most dynamic fashion ecosystems. Produced by her agency, Style House Files, the event brings together over sixty designers each season, attracting tens of thousands of guests and international buyers who see it as the creative pulse of African fashion.
Over the years, Akerele has embedded sustainability into every seam of the platform. Every designer wishing to show at the event must demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practice — from how materials are sourced and dyed, to how garments are produced and transported, the Earthshot Prize said in the announcement.
The recognition arrives as the industry reckons with the immense toll of overproduction. Globally, consumers now buy around 60 percent more clothing than they did two decades ago, but keep each piece for only half as long, with less than one percent of textiles recycled into new garments. Lagos Fashion Week’s model of accountability offers a new blueprint.
Sustainable fashion platform Onata Haus made its debut this week at Lagos. Its founder, Cassandra Dittmer Nweze said it offers the ability “to wear your values — to know who made your clothes, to connect with the hands and stories behind them, and to intentionally collect pieces that stay with you throughout the different seasons of life. We believe that fashion can be both beautiful and conscious. What matters most to us is connection beyond transaction.”
Programs such as Green Access and Woven Threads have become pillars of the event, championing upcycling, slow fashion, and regenerative craft. These initiatives are designed to cultivate what Akerele describes as “a new consciousness” in African fashion — one that honors the continent’s rich artisanal heritage while responding to modern environmental realities.
Designers, including Abasiekeme Ukanireh, have embraced the challenge, experimenting with natural indigo and kola nut dyes as alternatives to synthetics. “Every year, as a designer, I always try to push the boundaries a little further in terms of sustainability,” she told AFP, reflecting the ethos that has become synonymous with Lagos Fashion Week.
The award also underscores the event’s growing influence beyond Nigeria. Lagos Fashion Week aims to replicate its sustainability model across other African fashion capitals by 2030, including Kigali, Dakar, and Accra. The Earthshot Prize funding will help accelerate those plans, supporting training, infrastructure, and systems that prioritize environmental stewardship and creative equity.
Lagos Fashion Week’s milestone comes as the global fashion community increasingly looks to Africa for leadership in sustainable innovation. From natural dyeing traditions to the use of locally sourced textiles and waste-to-wear craftsmanship, the continent’s design practices offer solutions deeply rooted in cultural knowledge rather than extractive systems. The Earthshot Prize amplifies this reality — positioning Lagos Fashion Week not simply as an event on the calendar, but as an evolving manifesto for how fashion can build a waste-free world.
“Climate has come home,” Christiana Figueres, Chair of The Earthshot Prize Board of Trustees, said during the event. “As we build a global legacy, these Winners are proof that the spirit of collective action born here in Rio continues to grow stronger, more determined, and more urgent than ever. Their 2030 aims are deeply ambitious — but their impact to date, their plans in place, and their tenacity fuels my optimism. I am in no doubt that 2030 will be a better world because of them.”
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