Creative Advisory Council
Omoyemi Akerele
As the Founder and Executive Director of Lagos Fashion Week and its parent company, Style House Files, Omoyemi Akerele has been instrumental to the prolific rise of the African fashion industry. A former magazine editor of True Love West Africa with multiple degrees in Law, Omoyemi established the fashion business development agency, Style House Files, to create opportunities for African designers by spearheading initiatives that promote the advancement of designers and the evolving ecosystem. Since the company’s inception, Omoyemi has advocated for African creatives to be recognized and given the same opportunities as their western counterparts.
Otto von Busch
Otto von Busch is Associate Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design. In his research he explores how the powers of fashion can be bent to achieve a positive personal and social condition with which the Everyperson is free to grow to their full potential. He has for over fifteen years examined fashion beyond consumerism, aesthetic decrees and arbitrary authority, and worked towards establishing fashion practice as a shared capability, biosocial energy, a process of mutual flirting, a play of embodied attentions.
Carla Fernández
Carla Fernández is the creative director and founder of the Carla Fernández fashion house based in Mexico City. This fashion house is dedicated to preserving and revitalizing the textile legacy of indigenous and mestizo communities of Mexico. The brand’s vision in regards to manual methods proves that ethical fashion can be innovative, avant-garde and progressive.
Hakan Karaosman
Dr. Hakan Karaosman is a sustainability management professional and award-winning researcher focusing on fashion supply chain sustainability. In February 2020, European Commission Research Executive Agency awarded Hakan with the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie award for his project, FReSCH (Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub) that he conducts with Prof. Donna Marshall at University College Dublin.
Aditi Mayer
Aditi Mayer is a photojournalist, sustainable fashion blogger, and labour rights activist based out of Los Angeles. Her work explores the intersections of style, sustainability, and social justice-- looking at the fashion industry through a lens of decolonization and intersectionality. Her work spans in-depth journalism, having written for the likes of PBS, Atmos, Teen Vogue, Fashionista and more, to grassroots organizing in LA's garment district.
Amanda Pinatih
Amanda Pinatih (1987) is Design Curator at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Here she provides the vast design collection with new perspectives. Her experimental working method is characterized by developing other forms of knowledge transfer and explores how historical collections can work participatively and associatively on younger generations. Through exhibitions and projects, she responds to today’s social, political, decolonial, environmental and economic issues.