WOMEN WHO INSPIRE: Omoyemi Akerele – Lagos Fashion Week Founder, bags £1million Prince William Earthshot Prize
Omoyemi Akerele, the visionary behind Lagos Fashion Week, has been announced as a winner of the 2025 Earthshot Prize for her transformative work in building a sustainable and ethical African fashion industry.
Celebrated not just for her influence in fashion, but now also for her commitment to a sustainable future, Omoyemi Akerele, the visionary founder of Lagos Fashion Week, has been named one of the five winners of the £1million 2025 Earthshot Prize.
This achievement spotlights her pioneering work in reshaping the African fashion industry into a force for ecological regeneration and ethical practice, proving that style and sustainability are powerfully intertwined.
“As Africa’s most influential fashion event, Lagos Fashion Week is a cultural force, redefining the industry across the continent through a distinctly African lens. Every designer wishing to show at Lagos Fashion Week must demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practice, from how materials are sourced and dyed, to how garments are produced and transported. By holding brands accountable to these standards during the most important week of the fashion year, they have shaped how brands behave year-round…,” reads a statement by Earthshot, in awarding Omoyemi winner in the ‘Building a Waste-Free World’ category, adding:
“By 2030, Lagos Fashion Week aims to have replicated its model across five fashion weeks. Winning The Earthshot Prize will support Lagos Fashion Week to achieve those replication plans in Kigali, Dakar and Accra.”
Earthshot: £1million and Beyond
Each year, the Earthshot Prize awards £1million to five impact and solution based projects, “ taking them on a journey that will see their solutions adopted and scaled to drive the impact we know they can have on our planet,” the organisation states.
The Earthshot Prize was founded by the UK’s Prince William in 2020 and exists to mobilise a decade of environmental action aimed at repairing and avoiding damage to the planet. The prize backs ambitious climate focussed and environment-friendly leadership and projects in five focus areas: to Protect and Restore Nature, Clean our Air, Revive our Oceans, Build a Waste-free World, and Fix our Climate.
Lagos Fashion Week
For over a decade, Akerele has been the driving force behind Lagos Fashion Week, one of Africa’s most respected and anticipated industry events. For 15 years, LFW has been a mecca for global fashion enthusiasts who flock to Lagos to see the innovative offerings from the continent’s top designers. For the creatives themselves, the high visibility LFW brings has been a key launchpad on their journey to commercial success.
However, Akerele’s vision has always extended far beyond the catwalk. She continuously innovates new ventures to support designers, such as collaborating with retailers like Moda Operandi to feature curated trunk shows on their site. This aligns with her core mission, which she succinctly explained to Vogue: “There’s a need for a consistent platform like Lagos Fashion Week to… shift the conversation from fashion as entertainment to fashion as a business and provide useful tools for commerce and creativity across the continent.”
Advancing the African fashion industry
This business-focused ethos is further channelled through Style House Files, her fashion business development agency. Through initiatives in creative direction, market positioning, and mentoring, the agency is dedicated to advancing the Nigerian and African fashion industry.
By awarding her the Earthshot Prize, the world recognizes what the industry has long known: Omoyemi Akerele is building a fashion legacy, as well as a blueprint for a responsible and thriving creative economy. In a challenging industry, she is inspiringly doing well, and we say, more grease to her elbow.
