The Lace Textile

Lace has become an integral part of African Fashion, a popular fabric that is shipped around the world to make garments.

What we now regard as lace became popular in the early sixteenth century even though lace-like textiles had been used for centuries. By the seventeenth century, lace-making had spread throughout Europe due to trade and immigration

The different styles of lace are so distinct that they can be sorted into categories depending on their origins, such as, Belgian Lace, French Lace, Bobbin Lace was first developed in Italy and Flanders (a region on the border of Belgium and France). In Nigeria laces are prestige and status symbols, they are a symbol of a country, a social class. In the 1960s they became the symbol of the new, independent Nigeria. Lace is worn as jewelry, has a high value, and is passed down from generation to generation.

In the 1970s around 30 lace companies from Lustenau, Austria set up a lace production in Lagos but over the time they had to close down. The lace were sold not as “Made in Nigeria” but as “Swiss Lace” due to the issue that lace customers want to have imported lace. Now, lace is generally referred to as ‘African Lace’ in new production factories in China and Korea.

African Lace is the modern version of machine produced embroidery. African Lace is nowadays worn with Nigeria’s Aso Oke at traditional occasions. For festive occasions, whether birth/baptism, wedding/birthday, graduations, funerals in a uniform look known in Nigeria as Aso Ebi.

All laces showing in our shop are directly imported from manufacturers outside Nigeria