Hi there 👋🏾. Olachi here, and we’re back with another trimester update as we step into the final stretch of the year.
If you read the last update, you’ll remember that it was more or less about finding our feet as a team. Now, it’s like we’re seeing things more clearly after refocusing and laying the groundwork for the future of our work. We’ve made progress in key research areas, reviewed our priorities for 2025 and hit a few small but satisfying milestones like reaching 1,000 followers on TikTok 🥳, and even being approached for a potential research project. It’s been reaffirming that our work really is finding its audience. Alongside these small wins, we’ve been reflecting on what it actually means to work together as a team.
Finding our Rhythm
Behind the scenes, we’ve been trying to ensure our expectations of each other are aligned. It is one thing to be very ambitious and excited about our plans, but translating that energy into everyday collaboration can be challenging. Obviously, it’s all trial and error — the nature of our work is more exploratory as opposed to following an established research framework. Now we have a working structure of how we both work, and communicating with each other about our work is way easier.
We also started applying to some funding opportunities, and while we’ve not gotten any (yet), the application questions have been useful for nailing down the much-needed clarity for some of our research projects. That’s how we were able to find clarity for what should come now and what belongs in 2026.
Depth Over Speed
In the last update, we had mentioned that we wanted to pick a research question every trimester, but that’s no longer the plan 🤷🏽♀️. We realised that the approach was unsustainable, so instead, we’re allowing ourselves to focus on a theme each year. This approach enables us to be as thorough and critical as we desire. This year, we fully immersed ourselves in the history of Nigerian fashion and the textile industries, and the video series on the history of the textile industry is only one of the outcomes of this research.
And while our bigger projects are still in progress, we started a new series on TikTok, titled Offscript 😅. It’s just something light to keep people engaged by spotlighting some of our interesting finds and conversations we have in the process of our research. There’s a post on our socials about a student collection from 2006 we stumbled upon from Sardauna magazine, a publication by students of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and another post inspired by an image in the archive of Aloma Mariam Mukhtar – the first woman to become the Chief Justice of Nigeria. We were curious about her appearance in 1971 and whether her style would even fly in court today.
Connecting with People
Recently, one of the joys of this trimester has been connecting with people. We’ve had people reach out to us on TikTok with resources we might not have found on our own.
Offline, that sense of connection has carried through as well. Elizabeth is in Lagos for a month on a field trip and attended archivi.ng’s August Event over the weekend. It was lovely to put faces to people who have engaged with our work on TikTok and to connect with new people who love our work. These moments remind us that the work is part of a wider community of learning and information exchange, and keep us motivated.
What’s Coming Next?
Looking ahead, we have a few things in motion:
First things first, one of the articles we had mentioned in the last update — an essay that has since taken on a different shape, becoming very much foundational to our work in general. It should drop any day this month, so keep an eye out for it.
We’re putting together a video series we’re pretty excited about. It will go LIVE on TikTok during the week of Lagos Fashion Week, so be on the lookout for it.
To wrap up our research focus for the year, we’re interviewing textile designers who worked in the now-defunct textile companies in Nigeria from the ‘60s to the ‘90s. We’re looking at textile industries based in Lagos, Kaduna and Kano. If you have a lead on this or are interested in this study, please email us at info@archiving.fashion.
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