The Museum Gift Shop Gets a Fashion Makeover as Alára Touches Down for ‘Africa Fashion’
The museum gift shop is becoming a full-fledged fashion destination for the first time.
As the “Africa Fashion” exhibit opens at the Brooklyn Museum Friday, Alára, West Africa’s first fashion, luxury and lifestyle concept store, will open as a boutique beside it.
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The link-up with the museum is the Lagos, Nigeria-based store’s first foray outside of Africa, and founder Reni Folawiyo felt it was time to give the eight-year-old concept shop global reach.
“Alára is a celebration of Africa, a celebration of Africans, an education for us as well as other people in the world. It represents an elevation of everything that we do,” Folawiyo told WWD. “’Alára’ means the wondrous performer, one that thrills endlessly [in the Yoruba language]. For me, the different elements of creativity in Africa is a constant thrill and a journey of discovery. And I say that because there really is so much to discover and to expose and to teach people about.”
Rachel Shechtman, Brooklyn Museum’s entrepreneur in residence, felt similarly when she discovered what the shop was doing. What began as LinkedIn outreach from Folawiyo’s son Sayo outlining what Alára does, led to an invitation for Shechtman to see for herself, and culminated in a new matchup between museum and marketplace.
“By the time I went there I knew about the exhibition coming to the Brooklyn Museum,” Shechtman said. “Listen, [Sir] David Adjaye [award winning Ghanaian-British architect] designed her store. She sells Louboutin and YSL next to African brands. I didn’t have to walk in the front door to know that it would be genius.”
The aim in bringing Alára to the museum, she added, was to lend the exhibition shop experience a new kind of authority and authenticity, which Folawiyo worked with the museum’s director of merchandising and retail strategy Kate Foley, to do.
“Partnering with Brooklyn Museum is a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for us, simply because of what they stand for in New York and how similar our values are around culture and art and inclusion and community,” Folawiyo said. “And we also learned that the ‘African Fashion’ exhibition that was coming from the V&A was being expanded to include lifestyle, music, community — things that were not in the first exhibition — and by the looks of it, we fit perfectly into that.”
In Lagos, Alára is a vibe, it’s a destination, it’s a creative community of African talent, from fashion, to ceramics, to art installations and even nourishment, with onsite restaurant Nok known for its celebration of pan-African cuisine. “It’s more than a store,” Folawiyo said.
In Brooklyn, it’s already a vibe, too, with Wednesday night’s press and VIP opening seeing the shop flooded with visitors feasting their eyes on treasures from indigo clothing to handwoven handbags, multi-hued ceramics and contemporary jewelry, among other things. Most ended up in the checkout line and all were abuzz about Alára’s offerings.
“For me [Alára is] about taking that creativity, taking today’s world and looking at it and saying, ‘where do we fit and how do people see us?’ and understanding that, previously, the world didn’t see us in a certain way. And then it’s taking all the talent and the skill that I see and putting it on a pedestal and saying, ‘this is what we have.’ It’s saying that to Africans and saying that to the rest of the world and understanding that no one can actually dispute that when they do see it,” she explained. “It’s a platform of that celebration and education, which I felt that for a long time people didn’t get the chance to experience.”
What will manifest at the museum is a mini version of the mama Alára and “a living version of the exhibition,” featuring pieces from included designers and exclusives just for this shop.
“Perhaps if you’re in the exhibition, you see a more elevated, probably more conceptual piece from a designer. By the time you come into Alára, that piece is a wearable piece from the designer,” Folawiyo explained. “If you take Thebe Magugu, who is in the exhibition, he’s created very loose silk dresses with pictures of African women in front of it. And he always tells these special stories with his pieces and this was made specially for us.”
At least 10 designers featured in the exhibit will have pieces in the shop, including apparel and accessories. Other designers from the continent with pieces in the Lagos location will also be featured. The museum shop will come complete with collabs and drops that will roll out over the exhibit’s tenure, from Friday through Oct. 22.
Air Afrique, a Parisian collective of creatives resurfacing the name and aesthetic of a defunct West African airline, has created an exclusive T-shirt for the Alára museum shop. Nigerian skate culture hub Wafflesncream and New York-based jewelry brand Khiry have also created pieces for the shop. Drops will be relayed through marketing on both Alára and the Brooklyn Museum’s websites, as well as on social media channels.
Lagos Space Program, a label Folawiyo is “particularly excited about” and whose designer Adeju Thompson just won the International Woolmark Prize, was a finalist for the LVMH, and who will show at Palais de Tokyo during Paris Fashion Week on Sunday, created a capsule collection of accessories for the Alára museum shop.
“I’m excited about the depth of what he does and his ability to cross many, many boundaries and borders, just because he understands how to stand out as an African designer,” she said.
Africa has brought — and continues to bring — a lot to the table, and Folawiyo wants more people to know about it.
“I would like a lot of people to come and discover what we’ve done, what we are doing in Africa and why we believe that we naturally fit into the global conversation of fashion,” she said. “What we bring from Africa is a new idea to the table based on what people had seen before or what has been sold to the world about Africa, Africa design, Africa craftsmanship…what we hope to bring is an authentic representation of what we live, of how we live and what we see daily from the different regions. And that’s to say it’s not dashiki, it’s not just some weird, overly commercialized things; we actually create real designs, real pieces that are a lot of times rooted in our culture that we unearth and make into these contemporary pieces.
“Having that authentic process and having an authentic way of showing the world, that is bringing something new.”
As to whether there are plans for a more permanent Alára stateside, it’s possible, Folawiyo said. “Yes, we’ve thought about that depending on how this goes.”
Contributions by Rosemary Feitelberg.
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