By Christy Anyanwu Sunglasses are a great way to express your personal style and add a touch of glamour to your outfit. At the recent Africa Fashion Week London (AFWL) in October, Aderiyike Makinde the creative director of Aderiyike showcased iconic sunglasses. She spoke with Saturday Sun at the event.
Tell us about yourself? My name is Aderiyike Makinde. I’m from Ogun State in Nigeria. I’m the creative director of Aderiyike, and I make luxury sustainable sunglasses.
I started pretty much a year ago and the inspiration came from trying to build a sustainable brand. I work in the tech space and I was looking for brands that are century-old in Nigeria and I couldn’t find any. So I’m using my experience and love for fashion.
I started doing research into what could be a sustainable brand that I could go into. So during my research, I found out that sunglasses was a very niche area where just one company owned 87 per cent of the global sunglasses market and I was wondering what the reasons could be that was stopping people from entering that market. So during my research, I started researching how to make sunglasses and that led me into, you know, making sustainable sunglasses using different materials and testing different materials.
So I ended up with a material called bio acetate, which simply means a blend of wood pulp and coating to make these sunglasses. So no plastic was used and the glasses are very durable, very long-lasting, they are polarised, UV 400 and the ti.
