ONALAJA Rises From The Ashes at London Fashion Week

Onalaja show Look 1, courtesy of Onalaja.

For London Fashion Week, Kanyinsola Onalaja turnt personal loss into a story of resilience, craftsmanship and rebirth.

At 6pm on Sunday 20^th September, ONALAJA presented Rising From The Ashes at London Fashion Week, a collection exploring destruction, resilience and rebirth through couture craftsmanship, African heritage and the symbolism of the phoenix.

Originally conceived in 2020, the collection began as an exploration of transformation and the possibility of finding beauty after devastation. Its meaning changed completely when a fire destroyed more than a decade of ONALAJA’s work, including archives, fabrics, samples, embellishments and irreplaceable pieces.

Onalaja show Look 15, courtesy of Onalaja.

What remained were the original sketches and the vision behind them. Returning to those drawings after the fire, founder and creative director Kanyinsola Onalaja transformed the phoenix from a creative symbol into a deeply personal reflection of what it means to rebuild.

“The phoenix does not rise by becoming exactly what it was before,” Onalaja explains. “It rises transformed.” The collection therefore does not attempt to recreate what was lost, but explores what can emerge from it.

From The Burn to The Rebirth

Rising From The Ashes unfolds across three movements: The Burn, The Ash and The Rebirth.

The colour story follows the same emotional progression, moving from ember reds, burnt oranges and terracotta into scorched blacks and smoky greys before returning to molten gold, iridescence and vivid colour.

Across the collection, sculptural feather-like forms, hand embroidery, crystal embellishment and reflective threads create garments that appear to shift with movement. Broken and reconstructed beadwork is particularly significant, turning fragmentation into ornament and making the process of rebuilding visible within the clothes themselves.

Evening gowns, sculptural dresses, tailoring and statement pieces push ONALAJA’s signature hand embellishment further, while Yoruba and Edo Bini influences are reinterpreted through feathered motifs, embroidery, beadwork and intricate surface treatments.

Onalaja show Look 10, courtesy of Onalaja.

Craft as Memory

For Onalaja, craftsmanship is more than decoration. After losing the physical archive of the house, the act of making became a way of preserving its identity through the hands of its makers.

In her conversation with New Wave, Onalaja describes the broken beadwork as a direct reflection of rebuilding ONALAJA. Rather than hiding the fractures, they remain visible — becoming part of the beauty and meaning of each piece.

The same approach extends to the hand embroidery, crystals, reflective threads and sculptural forms. The slowness of these techniques became important after an event that destroyed so much in an instant, making the labour embedded within each garment part of the collection’s emotional language.

Onalaja show Look 14, courtesy of Onalaja.

A New Chapter for ONALAJA

The collection also continued ONALAJA’s wider purpose of creating for women who have historically been overlooked within luxury fashion.

For Onalaja, her Yoruba and Edo Bini heritage informs her understanding of colour, ceremony, adornment and transformation. These references are not simply decorative, but form part of a design language rooted in identity, craftsmanship and cultural memory.

That philosophy is reflected in the designer’s approach to inclusion, with ONALAJA continuing to champion an inclusive size range alongside made-to-order and made-to-measure options.

Onalaja show Look 16, courtesy of Onalaja.

Now, London Fashion Week marked another stage in that rebuilding process. London is where Onalaja studied, developed her voice and established the house, making Sunday’s presentation feel like a return to the place where much of ONALAJA’s identity was formed.

Rising From The Ashes is ultimately not about what was lost. It is about what survived: the craftsmanship, the cultural identity, the people behind the house and the vision that remained when its physical history was destroyed.

From the ashes, ONALAJA begins again.