I.AM.ISIGO’s SS27 Collection Turns Ecology Into A Form Of Resistance

I.AM.ISIGO makes clothes that ask you to reconsider where knowledge lives in the first place. For Spring/Summer 2027, Bubu Ogisi takes that idea somewhere even more political with Sacred Ecologies, a collection about land, memory, and the relationship between the body and its environment.

Presented during Copenhagen Fashion Week, the collection treats ecology as something inseparable from history and power. Its starting point is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow, where environmental destruction is bound to colonialism, inequality, and political control. Instead of imagining nature as an escape from those forces, Ogisi approaches it as a space of resistance. I find that distinction really important. Here, the land isn't scenery. It has agency.

The Body Becomes A Map

The most fascinating pieces are the ones that seem to exist somewhere between clothing and sculpture.

Ogisi draws from the lukasa, a Luba memory board made from wood, beads, and shells that carries histories, genealogies, migrations, and sacred geography without relying on written language. That idea is translated into sculptural garments with their own internal architecture, creating shapes that almost seem to carry the body rather than simply dress it.

The effect is strange in the best possible way. The clothes don't completely explain themselves. They ask you to look, move around them, and imagine what kind of knowledge they might be holding.

Nothing Is Really Waste

The materials make the philosophy tangible.

Banana fiber from Uganda, sisal from Tanzania, cotton and wooden beads from Nigeria, recycled aluminum from Kenya, recycled glass, natural dyes, and reclaimed fibers all make their way into the collection. Weaving takes place in Kenya, while leftover yarn is returned to crochet and fabric offcuts are worked back into outerwear.

I particularly like that the imperfections aren't hidden. The surfaces retain the evidence of hands and time, making each piece feel closer to an artifact than a polished commodity.

Craft Becomes Its Own Language

I.AM.ISIGO's approach to craft is much deeper than simply celebrating handmade production.

Ogisi describes craft as a kind of mystery system, and Sacred Ecologies makes that idea visible. The collection draws on the movement of healers, teachers, and knowledge keepers who carried spiritual and material knowledge from place to place rather than allowing it to become fixed inside institutions.

That idea of wandering becomes important to the clothes themselves. Knowledge moves. Bodies move. Materials move. Nothing stays completely still.

The Future Doesn't Have To Mean Forgetting

What stayed with me most about Sacred Ecologies is that it doesn't treat heritage as something fragile that needs to be preserved exactly as it was.

Instead, Ogisi uses ancestral knowledge as something active. Something capable of changing shape, crossing borders, and speaking to the present.

At a time when sustainability is so often reduced to material percentages and production statistics, I.AM.ISIGO offers a much more complicated idea. Ecology isn't just about what we make clothes from. It's about how we understand land, memory, labor, and our responsibility to each other.

And maybe that's why these clothes feel so alive. They're not trying to recreate the past because they're carrying it forward.