Ranto Clothings’ new Africa Collection, released October 3rd, 2025 under the creative direction of Bright Urhobo, states loudly something fashion from the continent has always done quietly, which is refusing to choose between elegance and cultural clarity. This look captures that tension beautifully. It is not just a dress. It is a statement.
The silhouette is one that moves from hourglass to drama at the knee. The bodice, strapless and sculpted, hugging the torso with almost corset-like precision but without visible boning or panel breaks. This smoothness is important, it says control, not struggle. It frames the shoulders, neck, and collarbones like an open stage. You immediately see femininity and power at the same time.
From the bust through the hips, the cut is lean and intentional. At the knee level, the dress breaks its own discipline. A structured peplum panel in vivid orange slices across the form and erupts outward, before the fabric drops into a gathered, floor-skimming flare. The lower portion pools, almost like a mermaid hem, allowed to relax and breathe instead of staying tight and restricted.
This two-stage drama (cinched elegance up top, controlled excess below) does a few things: It sculpts the body without oversexualizing it, it gives movement and presence without sacrificing fit and creates a visual rhythm, slim, explosion, flow, that keeps the eye traveling.
It’s clever engineering. The orange peplum is positioned just below the widest point of the hips, which visually lengthens the torso and prevents the silhouette from feeling bottom-heavy. On a runway or red carpet, that orange flare will read as motion even when the wearer is standing still.
The main body of the dress is cut from a navy-and-white patterned fabric. The motif is busy but not chaotic, it’s an allover print with a small, repeated curl/whorl that sits somewhere between calligraphy and tide lines. It feels organic, almost like stylized waves, and it plays with negative/positive space in a way you find often in West African textile traditions, where repetition acts as both decoration and meaning.
Urhobo isn’t using a loud, obvious “heritage print” that screams African cliché. He’s using a refined, almost intellectual pattern. Its heritage filtered through restraint and the choice pulls the dress out of costume territory and places it in contemporary global eveningwear.
Then there is the counterpoint fabric: the orange.
The orange appears twice, first as the headwrap and then as that sculptural peplum. It looks like taffeta or shot silk: crisp, light-catching, with enough structure to hold shape without collapsing. The color is a deep, warm citrus that sits between burnt orange and royal gold. On darker skin, it reads like heat. Against the cool navy/white print, it’s more like dominance.
The combination of these two fabrics, one soft, printed, more fluid and the other sharp, solid, architectural, is the core of the look’s success. It is a conversation between softness and structure, inheritance and intervention.
This is absolutely an international red carpet–ready.
The strapless neckline, the cinched waist, the controlled mermaid fall — all of that sits comfortably beside the language of major couture houses. But what keeps it rooted is the orange.
Western eveningwear tends to fear bold cultural signals unless it can exoticize them. Urhobo refuses.
He inserts an unmistakably African silhouette element (that peplum flare reads like a reimagined waist-wrapper/gele dialogue) into a global evening dress format and does not apologize.
This is how you design from Lagos to the world without diluting Lagos.
Technically, this is a demanding garment. A strapless bodice in a print fabric needs immaculate tailoring to avoid gaping; here, it sits flush. The waist is defined but not corseted to pain. The lower skirt appears ruched/gathered, which gives room for actual walking — it’s drama you can live in, not drama that needs three handlers backstage.
The orange peplum also has a practical function beyond beauty: it creates volume without weight.
Instead of adding layered ruffles in the same print (which would have made the whole look heavy and busy), the designer uses a crisp contrast fabric to create a single, sculptural break. That keeps the dress breathable and prevents it from swallowing the wearer.
What Bright Urhobo did here for Ranto Clothings is not borrowing Africa for effect, like western designers. He is building a contemporary formal vocabulary out of African dress logic. The result is not folklore. It’s a strategy.
He understands proportion. He understands cultural signalling. He understands that a headwrap is not an accessory, it’s an announcement. He understands that the waist is politics. He understands that orange, in this tone, is not simply “a pop of color,” it’s a declaration of aliveness.
By Daniel Usidamen