Nigerians are never shy people. Or more specifically, Lagosians are known to be flamboyant people. And this includes luxury. It is not uncommon to have people on social media say that there “shall be signs” to announce their wealth. And in Lagos, those signs are self-evident in how Lagosians engage with luxury fashion. In Lagos, luxury is rarely quiet. It announces itself. 

But Damilola Onosowobo Marcus has built a fashion brand that both announces itself and yet balances and honours her beliefs in slow fashion.

To start with, she is a visual artist, designer, and co-founder of Bawsty. Recently worn by business mogul Florence Otedola in a Marie Claire editorial, Bawsty has become the aspirational brand for upwardly mobile Nigerian women. What sets it apart is the story behind it and why it is necessary in the current climate of women’s fashion. 

Damilola has often described herself as a woman with multiple interests. Working between gallery walls and a brand design studio, she turned a burning question about the poor representation of busty women into the best-selling brand Bawsty. 

For her, it was simply this: how can busty women be prevented from asking questions about where their bust will go when shopping online? In trying to answer that question, she is rewriting what Nigerian luxury can look like: slower, more deliberate, and made for bodies that fashion has long ignored.

An architect by training from the University of Lagos, Damilola is not new to making things with her hands. Her art practice has placed her in rooms that matter. She showed in Coalesce, a duo exhibition with Daniel Pengrapher Oshundaro at Affinity Art Gallery in 2021, where she painted balcony railings, entryways, and fences, which all represent the architecture of everyday Nigerian memory. In 2022, her painting All the Girlies at Eclectica Contemporary in Cape Town captured sisterhood and women’s evolving ideas of friendship and fashion. Last year, she exhibited at ART X Lagos and she has also exhibited at 1-54 London.

 

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If her paintings can be described as those which turn “memory into shape, paint into architecture”, then her enterprise with Bawsty does the same with cloth. 

Bawsty was born, as Damilola herself has described, out of frustration. With co-founder Morenike Olusanya, she set out to design for fuller-busted women who are a demographic mainstream Nigerian fashion treated like an afterthought.

In Bawsty’s universe, women “aren’t asked to shrink into patterns; they are invited to expand into designs made for them”.

That is slow fashion, Nigerian style. Not a trend imported from Copenhagen, but a necessity. It takes time to grade for a bust that isn’t in a size chart. It takes time to source fabric that holds structure without sacrificing drape in Lagos humidity. What is important to note is that in spite of a high demand to produce more to meet up with an increasing number of orders, Damilola has stuck to her belief in not producing at a mass scale. This, she says, is necessary to ensure her workers are not turned into those working in a sweatshop. 

What makes Damilola’s leadership distinct is that she never left her other practices at the door. As a designer and visual artist, she brings an eye for composition to Bawsty. The brand is minimalist on the surface, but the cut, the proportion, the way a neckline sits— all of that is where her training shows.

Running Bawsty alongside art exhibitions and design work is not easy. Slow fashion in Nigeria means navigating inconsistent production timelines, import costs, and a market that often rewards speed over craft. But it also means building community. In their 2025 Culture List, Zikoko honoured Damilola and Morenike for “pushing national conversations about body diversity forward” and becoming “a reference point for size-inclusive clothing in Nigeria”. They went on to say that Shop Bawsty, of which Marcus is the lead designer, designs clothes with “precision and empathy” such that they center bodies that are often ignored in mainstream fashion. 

Bawsty has become a personal favorite of Florence Otedola, and is worn by figures in the Lagos art and film scene like Fiyin Koko and Chigozie Obi. It is also worn by women in other parts of the world who report feeling seen by a brand that is intentional about busty women. 

When women who define taste choose a homegrown brand that prioritizes fit and integrity over hype, it signals a shift. Nigerian luxury no longer has to mimic the West to be desired.

In a culture that often tells women to pick one lane and stay in it, Damilola Onosowobo Marcus chooses all of them. She builds with paint. She builds with thread. She builds with the conviction that luxury should fit: in size, in values, and in time.

And that, perhaps, is the truest art of all.