NIGERIAN designer Tosan Jogho, the creative force behind Oritsema’s Threads & Atelier, has carved a reputation for redefining contemporary African elegance.
Last year in Harare, she extended that narrative, staging a private showcase that offered Zimbabwe’s fashion community an unfiltered encounter with his latest collections, “Bold and Beautiful You” and “Modern Finesse.”
The evening was deliberately intimate. Jogho shifted away from spectacle, curating instead a reflective space where models glided between guests. This slower rhythm encouraged editors, stylists, and buyers to study the garments closely which includes tracing the cut, feel the fabric, and consider the cultural story embedded in each seam.
The Bold and Beautiful You collection is a visual manifesto of confidence. With its daring hues, voluminous shapes, and unapologetic silhouettes, the line was less about clothing and more about presence urging wearers to claim space in both aesthetic and social terms.
Its quiet counterbalance is the Modern Finesse collection introduced in neutral tones, sharp tailoring, and subtle embellishments which spoke to Africa’s new professional class. Here, Jogho explored restraint, showing that sophistication can carry as much authority as flamboyance.
These collections framed a dialogue between visibility and subtlety, loud confidence and measured grace, a tension that resonates far beyond fashion, into African identities negotiating modernity and tradition.
Jogho’s choice to showcase in Harare, Zimbabwe was neither random nor cosmetic. Harare’s growing creative landscape where emerging designers are reshaping Southern Africa’s aesthetics provided fertile ground for this experiment in Pan-African dialogue.
The decision signaled recognition of Zimbabwe not merely as an observer of continental fashion, but as an active participant.
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Jogho’s choice of Zimbabwe as her stage showcase was more than a geographical detour. It was a recognition of Harare’s steadily rising creative scene, where local designers and artisans are redefining Southern African aesthetics.
For Zimbabwean fashion insiders, the showcase was more than exposure to Nigerian design, it was a mirror and a provocation. How does Southern Africa’s tendency toward refined understatement intersect with West Africa’s fearless expressiveness? What hybrid forms might emerge when these sensibilities meet?
Viewed through an analytical lens, Jogho’s showcase was a cultural intervention. It underscored that African fashion is increasingly borderless, Lagos and Harare are no longer distant nodes, but collaborators in shaping continental identity.
The event also highlighted the evolving role of Zimbabwe within the fashion network. Harare is not just a stage where foreign designers display, it is a city whose reception, critique, and reinterpretation of such work actively contribute to Africa’s broader creative narrative.
By the evening’s end, one truth was undeniable, Oritsema’s Threads & Atelier has transcended being just a Nigerian brand to become part of a continental dialogue on identity, power, and style. And Zimbabwe, by hosting and embracing showcases like this, is no longer merely an appreciative audience, it is a co-author of the African fashion story.
