Adeyemi Kareem: The Technical Craft Behind Orange Culture’s “Peacock Riot”

The visual confidence of Orange Culture’s “Peacock Riot” depended on something less immediately visible than its colour, styling or theatrical silhouettes: construction. Presented at Heineken Lagos Fashion Week in 2021 as the label’s Spring/Summer 2022 collection, the collection was created by Orange Culture founder and Creative Director Adebayo Oke-Lawal, whose work has consistently challenged conventional ideas around gender, identity and African fashion.

Within that production was Adeyemi Kareem, working as an Assistant Tailor and contributing to garment construction and finishing.

The distinction between design and construction is important. Kareem was not responsible for conceiving the collection. His contribution came further along the creative process, at the point where Oke-Lawal’s designs had to become finished garments. That process requires precision, patience and an understanding of how fabric, pattern and body interact.

Peacock Riot was particularly demanding in this regard. The collection moved between fluid garments, sharply defined pieces, layered looks, sheer elements and expressive prints. Its visual language was deliberately unconventional, reflecting Oke-Lawal’s interest in creating clothing that questions restrictive ideas about identity and self-expression.

For an assistant tailor, such a collection provides a demanding technical environment. Garment construction requires translating patterns into three-dimensional clothing while maintaining the proportions and character established by the designer. Seams must sit correctly, edges need to be clean, hems must fall as intended and finishing has to withstand both close inspection and movement on the runway.

The finishing process can be especially revealing. Good finishing is often noticed only when it is absent. When executed properly, it allows the audience to concentrate on the garment's silhouette and material rather than the mechanics of its construction. For a collection built around strong shapes and unconventional combinations, that precision becomes essential.

Kareem's role therefore sits within one of fashion's most practical forms of creative collaboration. The designer establishes the visual proposition, but the tailoring team determines how convincingly that proposition can exist on the body.

This was particularly relevant to Orange Culture's approach. The Lagos-based label has established a reputation for using fashion to challenge conventional boundaries, combining contemporary silhouettes with African references and a distinctive approach to gender-neutral dressing. The production of such garments requires tailors who can work beyond predictable construction methods and respond accurately to unusual proportions and details.

Kareem's experience with Peacock Riot consequently represents more than a credit on a collection. It marks his participation in the technical discipline behind a significant Nigerian fashion label and provides evidence of experience within a professional production environment where precision is fundamental.

For an emerging fashion professional, that experience matters. Tailoring develops an understanding of clothing that cannot be acquired entirely through observation. Working directly with fabric, patterns, fittings and finishing teaches how design decisions behave once they leave the sketchbook and encounter the human body.

That knowledge can become the foundation for future creative development.

Adeyemi Kareem's contribution to “Peacock Riot” demonstrates the importance of the technical hands behind fashion's most visible moments. As an Assistant Tailor, he helped transform Adebayo Oke-Lawal's creative direction into finished garments, contributing the construction discipline and finishing required for the collection to reach the runway with its intended character intact.