Ayomide Okanlawan’s Visual Language of Colour, Contrast, and Conviction
Ayomide Okanlawan is a creative director and visual artist from Osun State, now based in Ibadan, Nigeria.
Black News 
Written by: Afrique Noire
Ankara fabric has always carried more than colour. Born from the wax-resist printing traditions that spread across West Africa over a century ago, it became the fabric of celebrations, of identity, of Sunday best and sacred occasions. It is the fabric mothers pass to daughters without saying a word — because the patterns already say everything. For Habiba Adebimpe, it was never just material. It was her mother’s language. And she has spent her life learning to speak it fluently.
Habiba grew up watching her mother at the sewing machine. Not as a passive observer — but as a student. She was taught how to cut, how to sew, how to feel the weight of a fabric and understand what it wants to become. Those early lessons were never just technical. They were an inheritance: a way of seeing the world through the clothes we put on our bodies, and understanding that what we wear is never simply what we wear.
That inheritance is visible in every piece she makes under her brand, Triplet Apparels. The silhouettes are bold and considered — designed for women who do not wish to shrink. The Ankara prints she selects are rich with pattern and meaning, drawn from the visual traditions of a culture that has always known how to dress with intention. But what sets Habiba’s work apart is not just the fabric or the cut. It is the confidence behind it. These are not clothes that ask for permission. They announce.
“I want every piece I create to reflect strength, femininity, and pride in African identity.”
Her process is as deliberate as the clothes themselves. Each collection begins not with trends but with stories — African motifs, personal memories, symbols drawn from her heritage. She sketches, selects her fabrics, and then does something increasingly rare in fashion: she makes the clothes herself. By hand. Using the same techniques her mother taught her. In a world where fast fashion
has reduced garment-making to an algorithm, there is something quietly radical about a designer who still believes the maker’s hands matter.
Habiba has taken Triplet Apparels to the Liverpool Fashion Show and to the House of iKons Fashion Show in London — one of the UK’s most respected platforms for independent designers. It was in London that the wider world began to take notice. Following the show, one of her designs was featured in Vogue. For a designer building something honest and rooted, it was a milestone that felt earned.
At Afrique Noire, we have watched a great deal of African-inspired fashion move through the global spotlight — much of it celebrated at a distance, borrowed without credit, worn without understanding. Habiba Adebimpe is doing something different. She is not inspired by African culture. She is of it. And Triplet Apparels is the proof — a brand built stitch by stitch on everything her mother taught her, and everything she refuses to leave behind.
