Irene Omiunu wanted to find community. A fashion illustrator who had been at it for a few years, she wanted to find people who shared her background. She searched and struggled to find African fashion illustrators despite knowing they existed. A hashtag search for “African fashion illustrators” on Instagram only turns up a few hundred posts and many of the lists that highlight contemporary fashion illustrators do not highlight African fashion illustrators. Irene Omiunu took matters into her own hands: she founded the online platform Fashion Illustration Africa.

In the past, fashion illustration was integral to fashion beyond reflecting designers’ ideas prior to production. Illustrators attended fashion shows and sketched the patterns and cuts they saw helping to dictate trends, advertise, and interpret style and design. With photography’s boom in the early 20th century and the internet (and subsequently social media)’s growth in the 21st century, some fashion insiders wondered about whether the digital age would render fashion illustration irrelevant. It didn’t. Fashion illustration went digital as well and in a pandemic where the fashion industry has been forced to introspect and pare down on excesses, fashion illustration’s relevance in all aspects of design and art shines forth. 

Although these questions about the fashion industry and fashion illustration are viewed through a Western lens, they are still relevant to the African fashion industry which has historically struggled to raise capital, and had to prioritize more sustainable ways of creating and designing. Through their unique lens, fashion illustrators in the African fashion industry help to promote African design and the patterns and prints the continent’s fashion has come to be associated with; designers flesh out ideas while incurring less costs; Africa’s fashion consumers see themselves in art as fashion illustration historically mostly showcased Europeans.

As Africa’s fashion industry grows, fashion illustrators are still yet to be properly acknowledged as integral. They struggle to find opportunities that pay fairly and policies and platforms that really showcase how important a tool illustration is to fashion and design. It is this desire to create opportunities that champion African fashion illustrators that inspired British-Nigerian Illustrator, Irene Omiunu to found the digital platform dedicated to fashion illustration in Africa, Fashion Illustration Africa, which features a database of FIA accredited artists ready to be commissioned. Speaking to Industrie Africa, Omiunu says, “There is no community for African fashion illustrators. We have luxury fashion houses in Africa but many aren’t really hiring fashion illustrators and when they even do, illustrators are not paid their worth cause there is no set standard or data specifically for African illustrators.”

Nembilwi echoes, “some challenges we illustrators face are exposure, competition, capital exploitation to name a few. Some of these can be addressed by more African brands being exposed to different platforms and knowing where to find artists.”

llustrators use platforms like Behance, Upwork and Instagram to promote their work. But if African businesses aren’t using these platforms save Instagram and “fashion illustration is not yet a recognized career path in Africa” as artist Adesola Lasisi shares, then African artists aren’t really encouraged to go into digital illustration.