DWL’s Ivie Osula Empowers Women Through Style with ‘The Icon’ Collection

Nigerian Fashion brand, DWL, launched it’s first international collection, the Icon, last October. With an array of bold, effusive pieces catering for the high end fashion needs of the powerful woman. In this interview with Daily Times, the Creative Director DWL, Ms. Ivie Osula, shares the inspiration behind the collection and gives insight into how women can achieve timeless sophistication through embracing their personal style.

2023 has been a landmark year for DWL. Can you walk us through the journey leading up to the October launch of your latest collection, “The Icon”

The Icon collection was our first international collection and it was a major milestone for the DWL brand. Each design in the collection was carefully curated and named after each person that has had a major influence in my life and the DWL story. The collection tells the story of the significance of friendship and sisterhood and one of the things we ensured was that every woman from around the world and from every walk of life who fit who is an ideal DWL woman, will find a piece in the collection that speaks to her.

The “Icon” collection was a significant part of DWL’s story this year. What inspired the theme, and how does it represent the evolution of your brand?

As DWL’s 1st international collection, it was important to go back to the brand’s DNA; confident, sophisticated, vibrant and relatable exemplified with strong silhouettes which depicts strength and vibrant colours that give warmth and feminity and well as high quality fabrics that add sophistication to each designed piece from the collection. I am surrounded by an army of women who teach, guide and support me every day and this collection was a celebration to sisterhood and ensuring that we continue to show up as the best versions of ourselves!

DWL has always been known for its vibrant fabrics and powerful silhouettes. How did these elements play into the 2023 collection, and what new innovations did you introduce?

For the Icon collection, we ensured that we has vibrant color offerings for most of the designs to ensure that we cater to clients choice of colourful or more subtle colour options depending on personal style and occasion. In designing this collection, we ensured that in true DWL fashion we came up with designs that strong silhouettes and vibrant colors so to ensure women can embrace their feminine side while still coming across as confident.

How do you ensure that each collection stays true to DWL’s identity while also pushing the boundaries of fashion?

One thing we do as a brand is push the boundaries of traditional fashion. Traditionally, more muted colours like the greys, blacks, navy blues and more masculine colours were seen to portray authority and assertiveness but we’re pushing the narrative that warmth in colours can portray the same level of assertiveness especially when infused in designs with strong silhouettes.

Our collection contains designs that help women come across as very assertive yet very feminine and warm. The collection features modern details ranging from as collarless details on some designs to crop length blazer designs all the way to long line blazers, very exaggerated shoulders and very wide collars on some designs to ensure excellent range in this new collection.

With the October collection launch, how do you plan to maintain momentum and keep your audience engaged moving forward?

I guess the result for hard work is more work, so it’s obvious that we can rest on our laurels. Wherever we are now, as excellent as it is, is the lowest that we would have to be. So one of the things that we do as a brand is continuous research to ensure that we always stay ahead of the curve. Trends are good but style is more important. We ensure that with each designed piece, women can maintain their personal style and not just lose themselves into trends. We continue to research to ensure that we have designs that responds to clients’ need and sometimes we even create variants of design out of existing designs.

We are fashioned forward in our thinking, and we push as much boundaries as possible while ensuring that our DWL women show up as confident, sophisticated, vibrant and relatable and in best versions of themselves!

Would you say DWL is that brand that helps women, maintain resilience in their personal style?

Yes, spot on. One of the things that we advocate in DWL is personal style over trend. We help women find their style, rather than just go after trend. That is one of our strong selling points. What we see is that we are guiding women towards it or women, through the continuous designs that they buy, develop a sense of style that is unique to them.

What role does storytelling play in your collections, and how did it influence the narrative of the 2023 launch?

I think for us, a big part of storytelling came with our campaign. With the launch of our first international brand also came our international campaign which we did. So, from the choice of the campaign shoot location to the proper interpretation of the collection, we shot at one of the best international lifestyle location in Doha, The Ned Doha and we got a style director that could interpret the concept of who the DWL woman is. What that did for the brand is that it positioned the brand and also the collection such that the target women, by looking at our campaign pictures, see themselves in a piece.

In the way we curate our posts on social media and the like, we don’t just tell stories from a standpoint of “we want to sell, come and buy”. We literally tell a story to make people see themselves in those pieces and then reach out to say I want to be a DWL woman and a part of the DWL community.

How do you see DWL’s impact on the global fashion scene evolving after this significant milestone?

At DWL, we take pride in converting one new DWL woman one dressing at a time. One of the near to long term goals of DWL is to have a presence in every major city of the world. We have conquered the African markets, broken into the Middle Eastern Market. We have a footprint in North America. So yes, with every new collection, with every new design, the goal is to push the DWL brand and to empower more women through the power of dressing. That’s our quota to this world and the more we enter these markets, the more impact would have in this regard.

Can you share some of the behind-the-scenes efforts that went into making the 2023 collection a success?

The first thing we did when launching the new collection was creating samples based on what the collection was going to be called. The process that went into selecting which of these samples would make it to the Icon collection followed a lot of consultations. We worked with PR experts to ensure that we were picking pieces that speak to the perception we wanted to project. We also worked with a creative style director to ensure that the brand DNA is in each piece of outfits. We also made sure that we picked the right kind of models that bodied the pieces and channeled energy of the brand.

What role does sustainability play in your collections, and how was it reflected in the designs launched in October?

Our take on sustainability is always to reduce. You know, there’s reduce, reuse and there is recycle. We make sure that in our production process there is minimal fabric waste. We have this one of a kind patch jackets that we do with our designs to ensure that we don’t have waste. In the future, we would look towards manufacturing our own fabrics that have less impact on the environment. Also, in the way we style our clients, we let them know that rather than just acquire, they can mix and match.

That is another form reduction on buying what is not necessary. We also adopt a small batch production process such that it is based on demand. We don’t overproduce because even that in itself has adverse effects on the environment.

How does this collection inspire the DWL essence?

One of the things that DWL does is that it empowers women to dress to project an amplified version of themselves when you dress good, you feel better. When you dress good, it enhances people’s perception of you based on how you look and feel about yourself. Each piece in the icon Collection, embodies this.

Looking ahead, how do you plan to build on the success of the 2023 collection for future DWL endeavours?

Following the success of the launch of the Icon collection, we would be pushing our designs into a lot more international markets paving the way for future growth for the brand. The feedback and the reception of the brand would help us to also get more international retail partnerships and opening us up to bigger platforms.

We intend to leverage on this and ensure that our future collections will also be bigger than this and command a much larger level of acceptance. We will also continue to research the market and ensure that we continue to provide designs that are very market ready and that we continue to help women project amplified versions of themselves.