Earth & Sky: Banke Kuku Spring/Summer 2027

For Spring/Summer 2027, Banke Kuku follows water from the sky to the earth in a story about growth, giving and new life. A glass house is a place where things are protected so they can grow. On 11 November 2026, Banke Kuku presented Earth & Sky inside a pavilion of iron arches in Lagos that felt very much like one. It was the right home for this collection. This has been a year of growth for Banke Kuku as a designer, as a brand and as a woman. She became a mother for the first time, and the collection that followed is about what it feels like to be surrounded by new life. “I never start with a sketch. I start with a feeling, and for Earth & Sky, that feeling was abundance. This year I became a mother for the first time, and everywhere I looked, nature was reflecting that same fullness back at me. This is my most personal collection.”To tell that story, she turned to the water cycle. The sky gives rain, the rain feeds the earth, and the earth gives back. It is a story about giving without ever running out, which is also a good description of motherhood. The whole room was designed to tell it. Above the audience, clouds drifted across a screen on the ceiling, turning pink and red at certain moments to depict sunrise and sunset. Flowers and grasses lined the edges of the runway. The runway itself was swirly, a path with no start and no finish that always returns to where it began. Guests sat along the pathways, under the sky and beside the earth, signaling that they are a part of the cycle rather than outside it. The first look made the idea clear. It was a long, draped kaftan pieced together from several prints, with purple and turquoise of sky flowing into green of earth. Sky and earth were not kept apart; they were sewn into a single garment, just as they are never really separate in nature. The patchwork carried a second meaning, too. Banke Kuku runs a no-waste studio that finds new uses for leftover fabric, and a dress made from many pieces wears that promise openly. Then the rain began. Deep blues and soft powder blues opened the show. On one short, boxy top, a trim of beaded fringe swung with every step like falling raindrops. The glossy, almost phot…