Code x Couture: Consciously Reimagining the Future of African Fashion
Compartir
10-minute read Photo credit: Creatives Garage
Author: Bardot
Introduction:
To wrap up the last 12 months, our final blog for this year covers the Code x Couture: Consciously Reimagining the Future of African Fashion panel discussion that Bardot, Founder and Cultural/Fashion Director, House of Nyabinghi, was invited to speak at on Saturday, 15 November 2025.
Hosted by Creatives Garage, a multidisciplinary arts organisation that provides a platform for creatives based in Nairobi, Kenya, the one-day event celebrated creativity and innovation at the intersection of fashion and technology.
Featuring a runway showcase, DJ sets, and interactive experiences that explored how emerging tools like AI, digital fabrication, and wearable technology are transforming the fashion industry, the audience – made up of Kenyan and regional designers, artists, technologists, students, and sustainability advocates – were interested in understanding how cultural heritage and traditional craftsmanship can merge with innovation to create more sustainable and inclusive design futures for African creatives.
Moderated by Bakhita Mutete, Founder of 25 Sw4p, Bardot was joined by the following invited speakers: Eneni Bambara-Abban – Senior Relationship Manager for Film and Creative Technology, British Council; Nathalie Naina – Communications Manager at Africa Collect Textiles, a company focusing on textile recycling and sustainable fashion; and Luca Rosa – Filmmaker, Stylist, and Set Designer who worked on Gikomba Fashion.
The following is a synopsis of the Q&A, including sub-themes specifically answered by Bardot.
1. Roots & Inspiration
Q: Tell us a bit about your heritage and how it has influenced your creative vision.
A: My heritage is quite vibrant and spirited to say the least. I was born in the UK, while my parents and both sets of grandparent’s hail from the island of Jamaica. Additionally, of my eight great-grandparents, seven were born in Jamaica, which includes one of my maternal great-grandmothers, who was of Indian descent. My eighth paternal great-grandmother fled from Syria – during the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th/20th century – to Jamaica.
The beauty of genealogy and advances in technology – when used for altruistic reasons – is that we can find ancestors that once lived from centuries gone by. I’m lucky enough to have a paternal cousin who was able to discover one of our direct ancestors, an enslaved woman, who fled from a plantation in Jamaica and, as far as we know, was never caught by the slave owners. To bet on herself and disappear from that plantation, going out into the wilderness of Jamaica. No space to carry fear. Just her, the moonlight and God. That takes some serious deep faith, resilience, wisdom and vision. I’m very proud to come from such a powerful bloodline.
It's this rich tapestry, shaped by the forces of freedom, the Transatlantic slave trade, colonisation, war, and indentured labour, that provides a fundamental imprint on my roots and identity and is the never-ending source of inspiration for my creative vision and output.
Q: How do you balance between working in global and African contexts while keeping authenticity at the core of your creative expression?
A: By grounding every aspect of our principles in our brand values: creativity, heritage, innovation, love and ubuntu, which also cover African-centered narratives. We adapt our work to global audiences without diluting the cultural roots that define our identity.
While we aim to collaborate internationally, our priorities will always be Africa and her diaspora because we respect how spiritual, and precious our Blackness and culture are. Our myriad of voices, languages, rhythms, movements, aesthetics, or other elements of Black society, prove beyond reasonable doubt that we are not, nor have we ever been a monolith. Without compromising our authentic creative expression, we can still protect and preserve Black culture while also celebrating our advancements.
2. The Intersection of Fabric & Code
Q: House of Nyabinghi sits at the intersection of Africanfuturism and cultural preservation. What does that look like in practice?
A: As an example, our 10 Word Story initiative is an annual micro-storytelling project that invites people to express beauty in their Black identity, heritage, or vision in ten powerful words. For allies, it can be what they adore, applaud, and appreciate – not appropriate – about Black culture in micro or macro ways. We then develop these archive stories into other multimedia sources which can appear on:
- Garment labels
- Lookbooks
- Lifestyle products
- Social media
- Exhibition walls
- Brand films
- Augmented reality overlays.
All these strands become part of House of Nyabinghi’s culture and ritual, where eventually every creative output carries a 10 Word Story, like an affirmation, cypher or prophecy.
Q: How can traditional craft techniques and technology coexist rather than compete? And how can it be used to archive or amplify heritage fashion stories from across Africa and its diaspora?
A: Simply put, technology can be your friend and a great tool for guiding your creative output. However, it shouldn’t be used as a replacement. Depending on budgets, I would recommend using the technology you already have access to – in a smarter way – for documenting, visualising, and/or scaling craft processes without replacing the human skills involved. For example:
- Create digital pattern libraries to archive hand-drawn designs and motifs.
- Make high-resolution videos to preserve the gestures and motions of master artisans.
- Use 3D scanning to record intricate weaving or multi-layered beading techniques.
Hybrid-making: Craft + Digital Fabrication – instead of mass automation, technology can offer new ways for artisans to expand their artistry. This could take the form of:
- Applying AI-driven pattern generations inspired by traditional artisan’s work, then optimising those multiple datasets to create, modify and restructure designs based on the creative industry field
- Developing laser cutting techniques to create templates for hand embroidery or other skills
- Utilising 3D printing components that blend with handwoven or hand-dyed textiles.
I recommend everyone checks out the work of Nairobi based design agency, Hisi Studio, an adaptive fashion brand that specialises in digital fabrication and sustainable textile practices.
Archiving Heritage Fashion Across Africa and the Diaspora
a) Digital Heritage Repositories – due to colonisation and the stealing of cultural assets for financial gain and exploitation, the fashion history of the continent of Africa is either dispersed within some of the nations on the continent, undocumented, or held in foreign institutions. This is where technology becomes your friend, and I would recommend using it to help correct these issues by creating:
- Community-owned digital archives of textiles, garments, tools, dyes and oral histories
- Open-access databases where users can search by region, tribe, technique, designer, brand or cultural curator.
- Interactive timelines showcasing migrations of styles through the respective nation, region and wider African diaspora.
b) Immersive Documentation – additionally, I would recommend immersive media:
- To allow people to conduct ‘interactive walkthroughs’ by using AR/VR experiences to see how fabrics are made and preserved, e.g., the kikoy worn by women in Kenya, Zanzibar and Tanzania or the red-caped ‘kanga’ fabric that adorns the Maasai men of Kenya.
- To help develop virtual museums that are fully accessible for all learning abilities, which focus on highlighting unrepresented creatives or techniques across Kenya and wider Africa.
- Or show in-depth how printing, dyeing, and tannery techniques have evolved across different regions over time.
African researchers, designers, students, and cultural custodians should use technology to achieve and maximise their creative goals because at its best, the technology you select can be used to document, support, and extend your craft, instead of replacing it. The digital tools you also use – whether existing or new – help to amplify and protect our collective African heritage.
By doing this, your local, regional, and national communities maintain authorship and control over all your cultural assets, which help to gatekeep the knowledge that might otherwise be lost or stolen by foreign government or corporate entities. In short, African creatives and the wider diaspora are then better equipped to create contemporary or future-forward work that still honours their respective craft’s core origins of identity.
3. Challenges, Representation & Collaboration
Q: Many of your projects celebrate community and collaboration. How can fashion become a collective act rather than an individual one, bringing together African designers, artisans, and technologists?
A: I would say by collaborating on shared visions and goals. I do believe African designers, artisans, and technologists can and should also work as a collective to develop and implement the following principles within an agreed framework:
- Concepts (i.e., your ideas, purpose and meaning).
- Communities (i.e., where people gather to feel seen and heard, their place of belonging).
- Rituals (i.e., your repeated actions, practices, events and storytelling that carry meaning).
- Authenticity (i.e., understanding and accepting who people are, their genuineness, values and integrity).
Once tested and reviewed, this robust strategy can be rinsed and repeated for several pathways within the creative industry, for the present and future betterment of Africa – and her diaspora – as a whole.
Q: What are some of the barriers that African creatives face in owning their narratives globally, and how can we overcome them?
A: Ah, this one is a no-brainer… owning, securing and gatekeeping your intellectual property (IP). I’d also add, it helps if each nation on the continent has robust governmental structures in place that protect African creatives’ asset rights across the global marketplace from misuse or theft, for example, and that enforcing these rights comes with heavy penalties on foreign organisations or individuals who violate these laws.
In addition, due to Western advancements in AI and wider technology, you may or may not be the first in something; however, the authenticity of your cultural depth and breadth is what will eventually separate the wheat from the chaff.
Q: With AI increasingly generating patterns, visuals, and even fabrics, how can we protect artisanship, storytelling, and originality from being automated away?
A: Through monitored economic empowerment programmes – technology can support artisans by:
- Providing traceability tools, QR-coded labels, that tell the maker’s story.
- Ensuring government departments for culture provide financial support and effective pathways to help creative businesses protect their IP.
- Using trade fair exhibitions like fashion’s ‘Première Vision’ to showcase your work and connect with legitimate global buyers, all within a secure digital ecosystem.
Essentially, the technology you use should amplify the value and creativity of your handmade work rather than reducing it.
4. Closing Prompts
Q: In one sentence, what does “Code & Couture” mean to you personally?
A: To me, it means an ancient language like hieroglyphics that is, in the case of Black people and our Blackness, a spiritual set of cyphers that we own the deeds to. It’s in our soul, our hair, our skin, our dance, our food measurements (i.e., not written down), but an unspoken language of feeling between us here in the living, our ancestors and our family members yet to be born.
Join the Movement
Discover your own narrative through fashion that speaks to heritage, hope, and limitless potential.
Join the movement and become part of the #DiasporaInMotion #NyabinghiNation