On 11 June 2026 Onalaja's studio in NW10, north-west London, was destroyed by fire. More than a decade of work burned with the building: the archive, samples, fabrics, embellishments, the graduation collection and SS27, already designed. The brand, says founder Kanyinsola Onalaja, was uninsured. Fourteen weeks later, on Sunday 20 September at 6pm, the collection showed on the official London Fashion Week schedule. To get there in time, Onalaja turned in part to artificial intelligence.
Onalaja, born in Nigeria and trained between London and Rome, founded her label in 2014. She makes demi-couture built on embroidery and embellishment, in sizes from XXS to XXXXL, and the brand is on the British Fashion Council's shortlist for its Designer Fashion Fund 2026. It is work that lives on hands and time, precisely the two things the fire had taken from her.
WHAT THE AI DID
The tool is Adobe Firefly, and the designer describes it precisely. She used it for reference and colour boards, to turn sketches into drawings clear enough for production and, above all, for virtual sampling: trying prints, fabrics and layering on screen before spending money on a real sample. Firefly also prepared the briefs for the artisans, with embroidery placements and Pantone colour codes.
The results, by her account, look like this: time halved on many tasks, and three physical samples instead of ten. These are figures given by the designer. The AI side of the story, moreover, comes from a film series made with Adobe and an article published in partnership with the company; reviews of the show told the story of the fire and the craft without mentioning the tool.
WHAT THE HANDS DID
Firefly replaced paper, pencils and swatch books. Needle and thread stayed where they were. The process, Onalaja explains, starts with a study of bird of paradise flowers turned into prints and repeat patterns, moves through experiments with beading to take the embroidery into three dimensions, and arrives at the original sample. Only then, she says, matched to a silhouette, "everything is tangible".
This is what the runway showed: beads broken on purpose and then reassembled, crystals, feathers turned into three-dimensional embellishment, hand embroidery with scale-like surfaces. And the brand's first move into footwear, heels covered in beads that recall coral.
REBORN FROM A FILE
There is one detail AI could not replace. A 2020 concept that was never made, Rising From the Ashes, had survived the fire as a memory on the designer's iPhone. From it came Re: Birth, the SS27 collection, in three movements: The Burn, in ember reds and burnt oranges; The Ash, in blacks and smoky greys; The Rebirth, in molten gold and the colours of a bird of paradise in full bloom.
The show opened with a video in which Onalaja tells the story of the fire herself. On 28 October the collection is due in Lagos for an intimate salon presentation. The machine gave her back time; hands remade the collection.
