Fiona Uwamahoro’s research offers a compelling exploration of how African fashion systems, particularly in Rwanda, are navigating global and national networks to establish legitimacy. As a PhD researcher at London College of Fashion (LCF), UAL, Fiona examines the shifting dynamics of designers and intermediaries, shedding light on the intersections of culture, policy, and education in the world of fashion. In her contribution to the Fashioning Frequencies x PhD Vitrine Takeover, Fiona reflects on the sociological underpinnings of African fashion, particularly its emergence and place within the global fashion industry.
I’m a fourth-year PhD researcher at LCF, exploring the emergence of Rwanda’s fashion sector since the early 2000s. My research focuses on how designers and intermediaries, from creative hubs to government initiatives, are building a field of fashion rooted in the country’s needs.
When the call to contribute to Fashioning Frequencies came up, it resonated deeply. It felt like the right moment to retrace my own relationship with Rwandan fashion, both before and during the PhD, while also showcasing the designers shaping it now. To do so, I selected garments by Rwandan designers that I had bought over the years, along with books and catalogues I collected during fieldwork. While sketching and installing the vitrine, I began thinking more intentionally about curation as a medium for research dissemination. The feedback I received from visitors, peers, and the designers featured in the vitrine has been helping me shape the direction of my thesis.
I was born and raised in Rwanda, a country that was, and still is, healing and rebuilding from the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. My family migrated to Belgium when I was 11, where I completed high school, and I moved to the UK for university. That journey shaped how I understand societies and my research, as someone navigating multiple identities and geographies.
When I visited Rwanda for the first time since leaving as a child, I returned to Belgium with tailored Kitenge blazers made by tailors. I began integrating African aesthetics into my wardrobe. On later visits, I discovered Rwandan designers, and I was ecstatic. I bought and proudly wore “Made in Rwanda” blazers, styling them with my skinny jeans.
In 2018, I read a Guardian article about how Rwanda’s second-hand clothing ban sparked a trade dispute with the United States of America, I became frustrated and started thinking about the politics of fashion, about global trade, inequality, and the Rwandan brands I admired. As a sociology student interested in African development, I later pursued a Master’s in Business, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship, and wrote my thesis on Rwanda’s fashion entrepreneurship ecosystem. That thesis eventually led me to a PhD, exploring how the “Rwandan Field of Fashion” has emerged and is evolving.
One of the biggest challenges is balancing creative expression with commercial viability because fashion is both an artistic and economic practice. This tension exists globally, but it becomes more complex in the Global South, where “international standards” often reflect Western norms. To grow their businesses, many designers seek international visibility, which can pressure them to align with dominant aesthetics and production models, sometimes at the cost of diluting their creative identity.
In places like Rwanda, designers operate within different ecosystems, where intermediaries like a fashion school or large-scale manufacturing are still in development, often being built alongside the designers’ own brands. Trying to conform to international rhythms without that infrastructure can become a losing game.
What’s promising is that many African designers aren’t trying to “catch up.” Instead, they’re adopting long-term strategies focused on their own pace, values, and communities. They produce more slowly, invest in local networks, and learn together. While global fashion now talks of sustainability, many African designers show it has long been embedded in their practices.
There’s an opportunity for mutual learning, but without naming structural inequalities, we risk reinforcing the very systems we seek to change.
I recently watched a panel by the Business of Fashion called ‘Designed, Made & Sold in Africa’. In it, Laduma Ngxokolo, founder of Maxhosa Africa, spoke about how his brand began as a personal project to redesign the garments worn during the Xhosa rite of passage. At the time, many young men were wearing imported Western brands. Laduma asked, “Why not wear something that speaks to who we are?” So, he created luxury knitwear inspired by traditional Xhosa beadwork - reclaiming cultural space through fashion.
Then there was Maryse Mbonyumutwa, founder of Pink Mango, an export and garment factory based in Rwanda. With the initiative Pink Ubuntu, her vision is about building new systems from the ground up, rooted in sustainability and community. That’s a form of structural resistance, not just reclaiming design aesthetics, but rethinking production, labour, and value chains.
African fashion is resistance in layered ways. It’s about who gets to define beauty, luxury, and relevance. Whether it’s a handcrafted textile or a socially sustainable garment factory, each is a form of agency and pride within a global system that hasn’t always made space for us.
In my research, I use a sociological perspective, specifically Bourdieu’s (1993) Field Theory. In this context, legitimacy is about who gets to define the value of a cultural product and who has the power to consecrate an artist or a designer. In fashion, legitimacy is tied to visibility and recognition, who is seen, by whom, and under what conditions
In Western contexts, legitimacy often comes through platforms like Vogue, London Fashion Week, or endorsements from powerful fashion institutions (Entwistle and Rocamora, 2006). Under those systems, African designers have often been absent or marginalised.
The examples I mentioned earlier, Maxhosa Africa and Pink Mango, illustrate how African designers are reshaping the “rules of the game.” They are adopting alternative strategies to build their brands and define success on their own terms. For Maxhosa, its cultural specificity and luxury knitwear are rooted in tradition. For Pink Mango, it’s rethinking manufacturing systems and local value chains.
My work examines how multiple systems of recognition exist, sometimes overlapping, sometimes competing. Who gets visibility? Who receives institutional or financial support? Who gets written into history? These questions lie at the heart of understanding legitimacy in emerging African fashion fields.
In Rwanda, many designers have been self-taught or trained through informal apprenticeships. Education has often taken place outside the classroom through mentorship, collaborations, and peer-to-peer learning. As the industry evolves, some designers have begun supplementing their experience with master’s degrees in fashion or business, gaining skills to strengthen their operations.
Education remains foundational, within and beyond institutional spaces. The current challenge is to design programs rooted in local realities, histories, and ambitions. This includes improving access to materials and creating physical and digital spaces for learning.
Education is also essential in supporting young people, nurturing their talents while introducing them to the realities and demands of the fashion industry. As Angela McRobbie (1998, 2016) cautioned, there is a danger in simply urging youth to “be creative” without building the systems that support, guide, and protect their creative labour. Education plays a critical role in bridging that gap.
While my research focuses on African fashion systems, particularly Rwanda, I teach research methods and sociology of fashion to both BA and MA students. My work allows me to introduce alternative narratives into the classroom, regularly drawing on African fashion case studies. It’s been encouraging to see students engage with designers from Lagos, Accra or in the African diaspora, and to see them begin to understand fashion systems not as a single dominant mode, but as multiple, coexisting, and competing systems (Craik, 1994).
At the same time, I’ve been learning from the classroom myself. As a researcher teaching creatives, I’ve had to rethink how I communicate complex ideas in ways that are accessible and relevant to fashion students. This experience is challenging me to later turn my research into practical, actionable tools that can be used in teaching.
I hope people walk away with a more nuanced understanding of African fashion, not as a trend, nor just a romanticised story of resistance, but as a field shaped by real tensions, histories, and ambitions. I also hope they’re willing to sit with uncomfortable truths.
I began this research with a celebratory view. But through archives, fieldwork, and conversations, I had to confront more difficult questions about the violence embedded in the systems we often celebrate, and the luxuries we enjoy. At times, it’s tempting to fall into cynicism. But instead, I’m trying to hold space for complexity - for beauty and trauma, hope and hopelessness to coexist.
The celebration of African designers must sit alongside the environmental and social damage caused by the global trade in second-hand clothing in places like the Kantamanto market. Africa is being framed as the next frontier of manufacturing, yet it risks becoming the next global sweatshop. We must keep asking hard questions and not comfort ourselves with the idea that a new policy or technology alone will solve the problem. Without addressing systemic inequality, we’re not solving problems - we’re just relocating them, hiding them under another pile of clothing.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Entwistle, Joanne, and Agnès Rocamora. ‘The Field of Fashion Materialized: A Study of London Fashion Week’. Sociology 40, no. 4 (August 2006): 735–51. .
Craik, Jennifer. The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion. London ; New York: Routledge, 1994.
McRobbie, Angela, ed. British Fashion Design: Rag Trade or Image Industry? London New York: Routledge, 1998.
McRobbie, Angela. Be Creative: Making a Living in the New Culture Industries. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016.
Mbonyumutwa, Maryse, Laduma Ngxokolo, and Reni Folawiyo. Designed, Made and Sold in Africa | BoF CROSSROADS 2025, 11 April 2025. .
Fashioning Frequencies exhibition is open until 21 June 2025 at LCF’s East Bank campus.
In this Q&A, Deborah reflects on her journey, current work, and why preserving and celebrating Black women's fashion is a vital act of resistance, memory, and cultural affirmation as part of LCF’s Fashioning Frequencies exhibition.
With over 35 years of experience in the fashion industry, Alberto Atalla Filho reflects on his journey from garment making to academic research, exploring how clothing, identity, and history are woven together through tailoring and remaking.
In this feature, Natasha Mays shares her journey into sustainable fashion, where creativity meets activism, and fashion becomes a force for social and environmental change.