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Photography Morgane MauriceMay 28, 2026Fashion / On the RiseFashion / On the RiseMarachii: The Chanel-approved designer taking on Nigeria’s oil industry

Arielle Uno-Ekwang is the Central Saint Martins graduate using fashion to tackle female oppression within the Niger Delta’s oil industry, and imagining a ‘glamorous new reality after the collapse’

ShareLink copied ✔️May 28, 2026May 28, 2026Text Isobel Van Dyke

There are few people working in fashion whose opinion is held in such high regard as Amanda Harlech’s. The British consultant is known for her close relationship with John Galliano, who she worked with during the 80s and 90s, helping to launch his career and shape his collections. As well as being his muse, she also worked as his adviser – her wealth of knowledge, references and depth of research made her an indispensable resource, especially with Galliano’s collections being so rich with history. It wasn’t long before she caught the attention of another encyclopaedic mind, Karl Lagerfeld, going on to work for Chanel, where she still consults today.

It was through Chanel that a fashion student from south London gained mentorship from Harlech in 2024. Just 22-years-old at the time, Arielle Uno-Ekwang became a Chanel scholar upon enrolling onto the prestigious MA Fashion course at Central Saint Martins. She gained support from the British Fashion Council and was even able to include reworked Chanel pieces in her graduate collection. “[Harlech] really understood my way of thinking, especially in terms of the human relationship to the natural world,” explains the young designer. If Chanel and Amanda Harlech are paying attention, we should be too.

Marachii's RUST collection at the CSM MA show AW26Photography Morgane Maurice

Uno-Ekwang showed her graduate collection earlier this year at CSM’s MA show, which took place during London Fashion Week in February. You wouldn’t have spotted her name on the long list of students in the press release, but the name of her brand instead: Marachii. Similarly to Miuccia Prada naming Miu Miu after a childhood nickname, Marachii derives from Uno-Ekwang’s personal family nickname. “I’m from the Igbo and Calabar tribe in Nigeria and my Igbo name is Amarachi,” she says. “It feels right because it’s grounded in where I come from – but it’s also fun.”

She was six-years-old when she decided she wanted to become a fashion designer, always making new outfits for her dolls and cutting up her curtains for extra material. The Disney Channel had its impact too: she was raised watching That’s So Raven, in which Raven-Symoné designs her own clothes and wants to work in fashion herself. As a teenager, Uno-Ekwang swapped south London for East Sussex, studying BA Fashion with Business Studies at the University of Brighton, before returning to the big smoke for her MA.

Presenting her final collection during February’s show is the closest she’s ever come to achieving her childhood dream, and she describes the moment as feeling like The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony”. “You spend months in your own world developing and creating your own language,” she says. “Then suddenly, you’re presenting it at that level.”

For Uno-Ekwang, her graduate collection had an added pressure. She wasn’t just debuting Marachii to the world, but telling the story of women who have been oppressed by the oil industry – “I was making something that was so much bigger than me.” She titled her collection RUST, which stands for Rebuilding Us Slowly Through Nature, in response to the collapse of the oil industry in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region.

The idea for the collection started with the documentary, Daughters of the Niger Delta, which follows local women who are forced to navigate the devastating effects of patriarchal systems within the oil industry. “The oil industry is deeply oppressive to these women,” says Uno-Ekwang. But instead of zooming in on misogyny, she chose to flip the narrative. “This collection speculates a world where they are the matriarchs. They lead a glamorous new reality that exists after collapse, shaped by resilience, where they can reclaim their femininity and autonomy.”

She sourced stories from Niger Delta from her own family history, while also researching 70s Nigerian psychedelic rock, and collecting obscure rusted objects from the English countryside. Keeping sustainability at the core of her collection, the materials she used were mostly taken from waste products, such as tyres. “It’s both a critique and a solution,” she says. “Rather than treating sustainability as preservation, RUST is a system of transformation. I don’t design conventional ideas of beauty. That’s why I’m drawn to unconventional materials. Working with them is about finding a point where ugliness and beauty stop being opposites and start becoming a language.”

Beyond the women of Port Harcourt, if she could dress anyone, it would be Solange Knowles. “She really brings together experimental glamour, cultural storytelling and a very intentional approach to her practice,” she says. But she’s already dreaming bigger than that. “I’d love to become design director for a house for a few years. I want to shape an independent fashion system that’s seasonless, when things are only made when the world needs it.” Maybe Marachii is exactly what the fashion world needs right now.

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