Fashion’s IT Family Legacy

With DEOLA, it all begins and ends with family; their bond grounded in their love for God, shared music playlists, the art of conducting business, and the business of fashion.

As we step into the glass-facade building that houses DEOLA, CLAN, and a family of other brands in the heart of a pulsating Lagos, I meet Deola Sagoe chatting animatedly with her long-time hairstylist, Grace. As we set up and begin our conversation, she switches gracefully between her Spotify playlist, and joining in on the chatter on set. She tells me the story of the playlist, titled playfully: Jesus Twimeee. Curated by different members of the Sagoe family, they all shared songs that uplift their spirits; introducing me to the affectionate energy of the Sagoe women.

The playlist captures the pureness of their hearts and a deep connection with one another, no matter where they are geographically.

The journey of fashion’s IT family started decades before Deola Sagoe was born. Her grandmother, a weaver, passed on the torch to her mother. “She {her mother} had an amazing flair for fashion.” Deola shares.

“Fashion chose me, and I believe that it did because I had been sent to impact African fashion as it relates to the world. It’s not just me; it’s my family.” – Deola Sagoe

Despite her strong connection to fashion based on her heritage, she shares she had no idea she would ever be in the industry.“Fashion chose me, and I believe that it did because I had been sent to impact African fashion as it relates to the world. It’s not just me; it’s my family.”

Her daughters’ careers reflect this continuous mandate; and while they haven’t entirely followed in her fashion-industry footsteps, they are forging their own paths in other creative industries.

Teni’s arrival further lifts her mother’s spirits, creating a heartwarming mother-daughter moment. The first time I heard Teni Baks (nee Sagoe) in our first virtual meeting, she was soft-spoken and remarkably articulate in communicating family values. She speaks of her mother and their business with deep love and respect for each other and what they do.

It’s with this same fondness that Teni shares how the values of family illuminate their work:

“Family plays a huge part in our business because it’s the cornerstone. We do everything together, whether it’s deciding the theme for the season or what each feature of every look that will form the collection we are working on might be”

Deola shares, “Everything is done in-house. From the conceptualisation to filming campaigns, everything is always completely done by the it-girls.” Their orientation of family extends to their clients, “We get so involved with clients, we want [our clients] to be a part of our family as much as possible.”

Their values of family come second to their relationship with God as they navigate the challenges with one another and with running a legacy business in Nigeria. “The real core of our business is God. So, if we have different opinions or a strong opinion about one thing, the final opinion we seek is His. It’s what holds us together as one and what has made us stand so strong in the face of every challenge that we’ve faced.” Deola shared.

Fashion: Dress, CLAN; Earrings, CLAN. Beauty: Génifique Ultimate Sérum Réparateur, Teint Idole Ultra Wear Foundation, Idole Squalane-12 Butterglow, Teint Idole Ultra Wear Highlighter, La Vie Est Belle L’Elixir, Lip Idole Lip Shaper, ⁠Lash Idole Mascara, Fix it forget it, Teint Idole Concealer, Teint Idole stick, Lancôme

“Our goal is to clothe women, not just in our garments, but also with confidence, grace, and with a sense of self-worth.” – Teni Sagoe

However, Teni shared a different perspective on challenges, citing their approach to external conflict. “Essentially, because we’re a family unit, it’s natural that we might have some emotional responses to certain things. However, when we convene to speak about external issues and our challenges, we hash out all our emotions, and everyone speaks about how they feel. And then we always kind of revert to reason.”

The it-girls sharpen one another and tell each other the truth. “We tend to look inwards, that’s the philosophy that we hold very dear to our hearts, not just as a family unit but also as business owners. We are very accountable[to each other]”

There are higher stakes when it comes to resolving issues, as Teni emphasised the importance of their clients: “Our goal is to clothe women, not just in our garments, but also with confidence, grace, and with a sense of self-worth. It’s very important to us that nothing gets in the way. Especially not our egos.”

Deola fondly remembers the girls growing up with this mindset. “That was the way they were brought up. If one of them saw the other one doing something wrong, they wouldn’t hide it. It wasn’t about ratting out the other person; it was about making them better. Everything was from a place of motivation of love, care, and accountability.”

Teni shares how they handled and overcame one of the major challenges they faced while building their family legacy. They took on their first challenge with CLAN following the reception of the public to “The Rampage” show in 2013, the debut of CLAN’s genesis collection.

“We started to understand the excesses of excitement and the need to balance that with reality when we read a blog post on BellaNaija, and it was very disheartening. We were so upset. I remember crying and feeling hurt, feeling like it was the end of our career as we know it. We started so young. I was 21, and my sister was 20. What we learnt when we sat and cried it out was the beginning of lessons around accountability in business. We asked ourselves, “What were we doing that made people think it was our mum? How do we show up more for this brand? How do we take this further? How do we put in the work?”

“Being daughters to the enigma that is Deola Sagoe, it’s very easy for people to see the privilege and forget humanity”. Teni recounts, “Everyone thought we had been given a pedestal at the time, but we were quite nervous because her shoes were getting larger and larger to fill by the minute. I don’t think anyone quite thought about the angle of us being nervous. We had a big challenge in front of us in terms of making sure that with CLAN, we maintained the same quality and attention to detail which she was so well known for. It was quite overwhelming, but from that point on, we realised the only way around these kinds of situations is through it. It’s making sure that you see what you can do better.”

Fashion: Dress, CLAN; Earrings, CLAN. Beauty Lancôme

Sitting with Deola and Teni and witnessing the range of their interactions, from playful to loving to serious, they share a reciprocal learning experience by being friends with each other. Deola also echoes the sentiments as she talks about Teni’s pivotal role in the success of the Komole line.

“As you get older, you do have to admit that you’re getting older, and you’re not out there. They (her daughters) have all the information, and they see what’s going on. When we did Komole in 2013, Teni was back in the country, properly in 2012, and by 2016, she said, ‘Mum, this Komole is too good to be sitting in the store. People need to know about it.’”

Teni had the bright idea during the era of selfies, and people’s need to showcase their lifestyle on social media to create a collection that embodied the spirit of an outfit for every occasion. “She created a mood board, and I sat down and designed the Komole, and she called the collection Komole Kandids,’ Deola shared.

Deola had some apprehension given the negative feedback from social media after the release of ‘Komole: Nigeria’s Regal Gift To The World’ which featured five models from different races.

“People said things like, ‘What’s Deola Sagoe doing? She’s doing things for white people again’, but all I wanted to do was to shake the tables when it comes to our traditional wear.”

Teni remembers fondly, “We wanted to give people a reason to celebrate through the different expressions of Komole, and it’s interesting because the one that blew up in the entire collection was the one for brides. That’s how the Komole became popular. Just that one outfit from the collection gained so much traction, and before we knew it, it was phenomenal.”

Deola echoes that this was Teni’s success. “She brought in that fresh idea. It changed the whole game. Completely.” Teni’s apprenticeship with her mother is one that she thinks about fondly, being mentored by her for 10 years. As the founder of Atinudah Concepts, she reflects on her design discipline being largely shaped by that period.

“I’m an observer. I always come across like I’m speaking more than I’m actually observing or absorbing. But the truth is, I’m good at making small talk and while I do that, I’m absorbing everything.”

She learned early on the need for critical thinking and problem-solving.“I learnt how to hone the skill sets that are required to solve whatever problem, or issue has been identified, or pursue whatever piques your curiosity or your interest. And in my case, several things do. Not just fashion. I love events, branding, homes, architecture, and I love a [little] bit of everything.”

Yet, there were moments when Teni struggled when she started working under her mother. She had always been creative, even though she hadn’t uncovered the full extent of her creativity, she felt trapped being confined to the traditional 9-5 construct of resumption and closing times and productivity hours.

“The first years of working together were slightly frustrating. I took a lot of fine-tuning, a lot of tears, for me to understand what it meant to develop discipline. For me, creativity and discipline do not go together, but in my mum’s world, they do,” she explains.

Her perception of creativity and discipline slowly changed as she confessed she sees the influence of her mother in running the daily operations at Atinudah Concepts.

Over time, the need to come to work early did start to sink in. Teni embraced the “creative glitch” she termed the irony of creativity and discipline, as is evident in her concept design company, which was founded four years ago in January 2021. “It’s funny because I now have the same conversations about discipline with my team. And it’s interesting because when I catch myself doing that, I’m like, yes, this is my mum.”

Fashion: Dress, House of Deola; Earrings, CLAN. Beauty: Lancôme

I thought, how can traditional African wear be traditional if the fabric is from the West? And so, I set about innovating, trying to make lace that was truly ours – Teni Sagoe

Recounting the collaboration with the Komole Kandids, which changed the outlook of traditional garments for generations, and having that kind of impact globally, Teni says, “This is not just a collection or a garment. It’s an archetype almost. It’s a moment in history.” Komole is trademarked and speaks to the innovation of the fabric. It reflects the contemporised mould for the iro and buba as well as the fabric technology that makes it unique.”

The innovation of this fabric started 20 to 24 years ago when Deola discovered Aso Oke, and fell in love with the fabric. Most of the traditional outfits made in Nigeria at the time were made with Australian lace and Swiss lace, she grew up thinking these fabrics were native to Nigeria.

“I thought, how can traditional African wear be traditional if the fabric is from the West? And so, I set about innovating, trying to make lace that was truly ours, African through and through. It took 10 years to do this. The very first one that I tried, one would take about two months to make. And of course, that was not practical, and would be expensive. But, 10 years later, I broke through.”

Deola weaves a love story centred on Aso Oke, innovation, and empowerment. “It was such an exotic fabric, and getting to know the history behind it, the heritage that Aso Oke belonged to the Yoruba as occasional wear. Aso Oke is Yoruba, and it is top drawer clothing.”

Researching more, she found out the fabric is hand-woven on looms, and the skilled craftsmanship dates back to as far as the 11th century, similar to French lace, which is also handmade.

“It’s all about the skilled craftsmanship of the people behind the loom. And I thought it’san absolutely intelligent thing to sit down to make amazing fabric on looms that date so far back into history.”

“I realised when you talk about high fashion fabric, Aso Oke is it. Aso Oke should be presented to the world and even reintroduced as a fabric and a textile of high value.” This conviction inspired Deola to make Aso Oke internationally acceptable. “If the West could make all those other fabrics internationally acceptable and desirable, why not Africa?”

In its historical form, the fabric was quite stiff, which relegated it to the function of head tie and the wrapper. She thought it was too good to just be sitting in a wardrobe or tied as headgear or held like an ‘Ipele.’ A trip to the weavers sparked creativity and innovation, and she tried different yarns to achieve different textures.

She reflects on her ideation stage, “If I wanted Aso Oke to drape beautifully, almost like a bias-cut dress, then there was a way in which I could get them to weave. I found out that the small-width Aso Oke was mainly woven by men across Africa, but women weave with wider looms. And the wider you could get Aso Oke, the more flexibility you get in terms of the different styles of clothing you could make.”

She would get weavers to weave almost 60 yards, out of which she made amazing dresses, which cemented what she knew about Aso Oke’s unique quality and status of top drawer fabric. Beyond innovation, empowerment holds true to the House of Sagoe. CLAN dedicates a store space (The Marshmallow) to house women-owned businesses, some of which have no brick-and-mortar stores to stock their products, giving them more visibility. Deola shares the big vision she had for the empowerment of women while deep in the ideation phase of the Komole collection.

“I visited a village where it was mostly the women who did the weaving, and I thought if I made Aso Oke appealing internationally, I could help to put food on the table for these women in these villages” – Deola Sagoe

“I visited a village where it was mostly the women who did the weaving, and I thought if I made Aso Oke appealing internationally, I could help to put food on the table for these women in these villages. I started to think about the cottage industry, which would empower people. It would help people send their children to school and have a ripple effect on the whole economy.”

The possibilities of this made her double down on the uniqueness of her work with Aso Oke. The attention to detail was so peculiar that she decided to make her Aso Oke trimmings, fabrics, buttons, and everything involved.

“This is how innovation happens, especially when you are not surrounded, as your Western counterparts are, with everything that you need. Necessity will definitely be the mother of invention if you are serious, and you have a vision and follow it doggedly and with all your heart.”

“I was able to keep on making Aso Oke look so distinct that even Africans didn’t recognise it. When I showed at the New York Fashion Week in 2000, I won the MNET AngloGold African Design Award. Andre Leon Talley at that time said, “This is the designer that is going to influence fashion in the new millennium, and that is exactly what has happened. That foresight impacted not only Nigerians and Africans but also the whole world.”

Thinking of the bridal piece that blew up from the collection, she talks of clients from far and wide who come just to be clothed in Komole.

“Look around, and every bride wears Komole. They call our Komole the Hermes of Nigeria.” The beauty of handwoven fabric is its countless interpretations on the African continent, known as ‘Akwete’ to the Igbo people and Kente to the Ghanaians.

“We have our different spins, and different signatures of the woven cloth. By 2012/2013, I wanted to make Yoruba fabric an internationally appealing fabric, and you find today that Yoruba people in the diaspora, from Brazil, Cotonou, and all the different parts of the world, they’ve come for Komole.”

Beyond the global acceptance of her innovation, women in villages in Kwara, Kogi, and Ijebu-Ode were empowered. Deola shares the story of one of her weavers whose life has turned around through her work with the House of Deola. She has been financially liberated to the point of building a home, sending her kids to school overseas, and sustaining her family.

“I thank God we’ve been able to achieve what we were sent out to do. Aso Oke has impacted the whole industry; the whole fashion industry has completely turned around.”

Looking to the future, the House of Deola will focus on opening up their family to a larger audience through their legacy project, after a successful run of celebrating the gift of heritage on the continent. The legacy project with Teni, described as the Deola Love Story, is about educating the public on what they’ve learnt so far, making sure everything they’ve developed over the years is translated into different relevant offerings.

Teni says, “We’ve done a lot of bespoke and a lot of made-to-measure pieces. We now want to explore a different expression of the brand, whilst also keeping in mind the need to empower and motivate the next generation. We want to make sure that our message continues to transcend generations to come.” Deola speaks on the principles of getting to build a legacy brand. She says, “We have plans to pass on the knowledge to others in the right manner. Not through intellectual property theft; that’s not the right way. We can impact knowledge to the coming generations, but also there has to be the right attitude on their part.”

She also speaks about going through the process of building a successful global brand. House of Deola’s process has catapulted the brand. Historically, being the first Black woman to present a collection at AltaRoma and the first Nigerian to have her own stand-alone show at New York Fashion Week (2014,) it has revolutionised the look of the bridal industry in a millennium.

“It’s no longer about us; it’s about society at large; it’s about the empowerment of people when it comes to skills and craftsmanship.” There’s excitement as Teni says, “It’s been a truly exciting and exhilarating journey. I have to say, still 14 years on, I’m still extremely inspired by you, Mother.

Thank you for everything.” She shares how she felt wearing Komole on her wedding day. “Honestly, I can’t explain the feeling I had, but this is why we do what we do. We want to share that beauty, heritage, and culture with other people. We want to see other people look and feel as good as the love story we’ve been writing for years. Sometimes we’re misunderstood, and that’s okay, but our message remains the same. We do this because we love to do this, and we love to see people look and feel their best. And even though it seems like we’re changing course, we’re still Deola.”

Author

Chidera Muoka

Chidera Muoka has worked as a creative director and journalist for a range of media platforms. She has created, directed and produced integrated media campaigns for traditional and digital marketing strategies for clients in the culture, lifestyle and media industries. She specialises in investigating and platforming a broad spectrum of stories that affect people and has directed and produced stories on gender-based violence and the rights of sex workers in Nigeria.
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