Reni Folawiyo Quotes

ALÁRA was created to be a window to the world, an authentic curation of contemporary Africa...[it is also] a symbol of my personal journey of self affirmation and belief...a fulfillment of a burning desire to celebrate and elevate a lot of what I had come across on my journeys in Africa.

I understand the connection: female founders, a strong and unique point of view, curated and presented with a focus on art and its interaction with fashion. But our mission is different: upliftment.

I devote a lot of time reading about and consuming the different art forms that we live with. I have tried to paint, I have made furniture, I have designed clothes, and I have always created experiences.

We will open people’s eyes to the incredible creative renaissance that is growing in Africa and how seamlessly it functions as a part of the global conversation of style.

When I’m trying to define African luxury, and this is not an exclusive definition, it has to benefit the person who’s buying it in terms of its value, but it also must benefit the person who was making it and the people in that chain of making it.

The luxury of having a purpose, identifying it and being able to realise it. It's rare, it's valuable and it's is covetable. That's Luxury

I felt that we needed something iconic that would change our city, change the way we see ourselves and also change the way the world sees us.

My love and appreciation for beautiful things and my value for artisanal products and respect for artisanship.

I decided it would be interesting to have the best stuff from all over the world along with the very best from Africa all in the same space to get people from outside Africa to see what was possible, but also to get people in Africa to understand the value of what they had. It was a bit of an education on both sides.

Going beyond luxury retail, we’ve become a platform for exchange across all the creative disciplines. Our curation is trusted, and our network authentic.

There’s a great appetite for consumption of luxury goods by Nigerians, but in terms of experiential retail with a concept...that is completely new...We have definitely had to educate the customer with regard to African Luxury, getting them to pay more for African goods that they have hitherto seen as craft and substandard.

I got the impression that although people were making these things, they didn’t feel as though what they were making was good enough to be on a certain level. A lot of what people were doing hadn’t been properly celebrated and there were these very beautiful, very well-crafted African items that people didn’t know about.

I have a huge vision, huge passion and huge ambition.

It’s about beautifully made, bright, colorful, expressive things that have a story behind them. It’s about art, clothing, and design that’s unique and beautiful. It’s African but contemporary

We are selling our culture. We’ve clearly become an epicenter for cultural exchange for all kinds of creative people. In my native Yoruba language, alára means “wondrous performer, one who thrills endlessly”—that’s how we see African fashion and design, and how we want global audiences to experience it and embrace it.