Abiola Olusola was born in Ibadan and raised in Lagos before leaving Nigeria to study at Istituto Marangoni in Paris, where she completed a BFA in fashion design in 2015. That formal European training shaped her disciplined, restrained design sensibility, which she has consciously applied to Yoruba cultural references rather than adopting a more maximalist visual language common among her contemporaries. After graduating, Olusola returned her focus to Nigeria, choosing to build her label there in 2017 and developing close working relationships with craftswomen in Abeokuta who hand-print adire, the traditional resist-dyed textile central to her collections. She has spoken about wanting her work to sit at the intersection of heritage and modernity, using her Paris training to refine, rather than replace, techniques rooted in her own upbringing. Her willingness to also collaborate with an established manufacturer like Vlisco reflects a designer comfortable moving between artisanal small-batch production and larger textile industry partners. Recognition as a Guardian Life “One to Watch” in 2018 came early in her career, marking her as a name to follow among Lagos’s newer generation of minimalist-leaning designers