Barakat Rasaki Learns to Design Within a Larger Vision

A fashion assistant’s contribution is often most successful when it cannot easily be separated from the collection around it. The task is not to create an independent visual language, but to understand someone else’s creative world well enough to contribute without disrupting its coherence. For Barakat Omolara Rasaki, working as an Assistant Fashion Designer with Tolu Coker for GTCO Fashion Weekend 2024 offered experience within precisely this kind of environment.

Presented in Lagos in November 2024, Tolu Coker’s OLAPEJU SS25 explored Yoruba heritage through family, community and cultural memory. The collection’s title evokes the idea of a place “where wealth gathers”, expanding the meaning of wealth beyond material possessions towards heritage, resilience and the women whose experiences have shaped Coker’s understanding of identity.

Visually, OLAPEJU demonstrates how cultural references can exist within the structure of clothing rather than simply appearing as decoration. Tailoring sits beside more relaxed forms, with strong shoulders, elongated proportions and layered silhouettes creating a deliberate tension between control and ease. Colour gives individual looks immediate presence, while styling and headwear introduce further references to Nigerian dress and everyday visual culture.

For Rasaki, assisting within such a collection required sensitivity to an already established creative language. Her position as Assistant Fashion Designer should not be confused with authorship of OLAPEJU. Its professional significance lies instead in contributing within the collaborative process through which a designer’s ideas are developed, refined and prepared for presentation.

This experience also represents an interesting progression from her earlier production work. On Orange Culture’s Peacock Riot SS22, Rasaki’s responsibilities centred on fabric sourcing and sample construction. Those activities placed her close to the material foundations of garment development. Working with Tolu Coker subsequently positioned her within a broader design environment, where technical understanding could support the interpretation of a larger creative vision.

That progression matters because good design rarely exists independently of making. Understanding how fabric behaves, how samples reveal problems and how construction influences proportion provides a practical foundation for creative development. OLAPEJU, with its careful negotiation between structure and fluidity, demonstrates why technical understanding can become an important part of design judgement.

GTCO Fashion Weekend added another dimension to the experience. Garments developed for a major presentation must survive the transition from workroom to fitting, styling, movement, photography and finally the runway. At each stage, small decisions concerning proportion, construction and presentation contribute to whether the collection retains its intended visual identity.

For Barakat Omolara Rasaki, working on OLAPEJU therefore represents more than proximity to an established designer. It marks another stage in a developing practice that combines material knowledge with exposure to creative development. Her earlier production experience provided an understanding of how garments are physically realised; her work as an Assistant Fashion Designer placed that knowledge within a wider design conversation. What emerges is an increasingly rounded fashion professional learning not simply how clothing is made, but how individual decisions must work together to sustain a coherent creative vision.