Last night, the cream of British fashion descended upon the Royal Albert Hall for the annual Fashion Awards.
The event is as much an occasion to show off and get creative with outfits as it is about the awards being presented – which means Little Simz understood the brief perfectly.
The rapper, actor and general multi-hyphenate made an appearance on the blue carpet to accept her award for Cultural Innovator of the Year, dressed head to toe in a custom Tolu Coker outfit: a skirt, green-blue long coat and hat – that looked excellent, blending geometric print and immaculate tailoring with some lovely fluid lines.
So, who exactly is Tolu Coker? She’s been making waves in fashion for the last few years, and her designs have been worn by everybody from Doechii to Rihanna and Thandiwe Newton.
2026 might be the year she finally goes mainstream. Here’s what to know.
Little Simz flying the flag for emerging talent at the Fashion Awards
Max Cisotti/Dave Benett/Getty Images
A London-Nigerian outlook
Coker was brought up in London, in a working class family, but has Nigerian heritage: her parents are Yoruba.
“My work is an extension of me,” she told Wonderland Magazine back in 2024. “Along with spotlighting closely-tied communities, it reflects the perspective of a British-Nigerian woman.”
She attended London’s prestigious fashion school, Central St Martins, and worked at JW Anderson, Celine and Maison Margiela before launching her brand back in 2021, focussing on exploring heritage and memory through Eighties-inspired prints, tailoring and pops of colour.
Storytelling is important to Coker. “I want people to be able to feel it, to see up close. We’re not trying to sell a story. We’re telling stories,” she told Elle in February. She’s also passionate about using fashion as a tool to create social change – especially considering she was one of the only black women to show at London Fashion Week.
“I want to see faces that look like my mother’s, brother’s, friends’ and neighbours’ represented and preserved,” she added.
She cites her upbringing as a driver for her interest in sustainability – her collections are made using upcycled and recycled fabric, which dates all the way back to when she was a child. “My parents were great thrifters of quality wear,” she told Another Mag last year. “We shopped at car boot and jumble sales, and my mum made a lot of things from hand-me-downs.
“I think of longevity, fit and wear – when people buy something, it should be of a certain quality so that they can hand it down, and it stands the test of time as far as construction and craft are concerned. It is always about a moment in time, a memory, a feeling, a connection to something.”
Tolu Coker
The moment Coker really broke through came in 2024, when she debuted her autumn / winter collection. Titled Broken English, it was a homage to street hawkers from Nigeria and across Africa, and blended takes on sophisticated power suits with West African-inspired waistcoats, kaftan skirts and heeled Ugg boots.
The collection was meant to shine a spotlight on global equity, diversity and eco-conscious narratives, and included restyled pieces from her previous work, adding in vivid prints, Prince of Wales check and stripes and traditional tailoring.
“Broken English is a double entendre – the necessary brokenness of this idea of western superiority and hegemony, this idea of Englishness being the standard. This, too, is a celebration of the pidgin used among market traders and hawkers,” she said at the time.
The collection won praise from critics, and in 2025, she followed it up by debuting Ori-Upon Reflection at London Fashion Week. That collection played on the Yoruba concept of òrí – which means ‘head’ – and explored what Coker called “the sacred act of making”.
The result was something that combined ideas of Britishness – striped ties reminiscent of school uniforms – with the immigrant diaspora, taking inspiration from places like Haitian and South American culture and Aladura churches, something she described as “predominantly Black communities in South London, very conservative Christians. With expressions of worship that mirror ancient spiritual practices.”
It’s clear that Coker is a designer on the rise: she certainly has an A-list fanbase. Tyla wore one of her designs in May for the Met Gala (which was styled by Law Roach), while Naomi Campbell modelled pieces from her Unfinished Business collection in September. Janelle Monae wore one of her designs for the GQ May issue, while Maya Jama wore one of her coats as far back as January this year.
She’s also getting noticed by the fashion industry. Coker won a spot as an LVMH Prize finalist earlier this year, something she described as “one of those moments that feel like a whisper from your ancestors. A quiet confirmation that you are walking the path they dreamed for you.”
No doubt we’ll be seeing much more of Coker next year.
