Ay Stitch’s Woven Voices Is A Modernist Ode To Menswear Fashion

By Maria Diamond

At the heart of progressive menswear fashion in Nigeria, Ay Stitch’s work stands out as an outlier. In her 2025 Woven Voices summer collection, the fashion designer, born Ayomikun Oluwadamilare Okundare, explores contemporary cultural memory through digital print on silk.

The collection sports a pink long sleeve buttoned shirt, woven in silk and stylized with Afro futurist motifs in digital print. It also sports a hand-beaded pearl choker layered onto the collar. Therr design is a vibrant garment that mixes Afro futurist aesthetic, with bold embellishment and traditional tailoring.

Apart from its gender-fluid, boundary-stretching appeal, Woven Voices also follows Ay Stitch’s signature architectural tailoring approach. High-waisted, pleated, wide-leg trousers with deep slits. Fitted shirt with a graphic surface. Bold ornamentation. The design breathes in contemporary couture culture, repositioning Nigerian menswear fashion as a power player in terms of creativity, originality and execution in the global fashionscape.

The cultural references in Woven Voices’ digital print explores Afro futurism with an artwork of an astronaut posing in a traditional Yoruba/Japanese meditation stance, layered with planetary icons hovering around it. It’s a bold imagery that offers commentary on today’s hyper-innovative, tech driven society, while subtly maintaining its overall concept of reframed masculinity. The pink hue and silk fabric says it all in Woven Voices, as Ay Stitch continues to use her collections as cultural commentary, including earlier works like Simplicitas, and Textured Africa.

Structure and form also take centre stage in Ay Stitch’s Woven Voices. In the collection, the shirt is sewn with a relatively angular torso, although emphasis is placed on loose slim fitting, especially around its shoulder lines and torso. The trousers, with its dramatic slits and floor-grazing legs, extend the silhouette into a classic architectural tailoring statement piece.  Form finds its face in the costume-esque look of the shirt. The two-dimensional digital print artwork and pearl choker elevates the outfit into a bold luxe garment.

Overall, Woven Voices is a striking design that feels like wearable art. Its structured silhouette and stellar form shine through Ay Stitch’s intricate architectural tailoring and unique digital art. It’s a masterclass in creating casual-formal bold luxe outfits that redefine commercial ready-to-wear menswear fashion. It’s a confident, conceptual, multipurpose outfit, built with cultural memory and wearer confidence in mind. It’s one of Ay Stitch’s best pieces and it strongly positions her among the vanguard of contemporary fashion designers uplifting Nigerian fashion to global standards one collection at a time.