
Marketing and branding are often muddied by complex terms and efforts. Yet, Loza Maléombho, is an Ivorian designer, and strong representation for young professionals and creatives looking to establish their brand identity and have global influence organically.
As the founder of Adiree Communications and marketing platform Africa Fashion Week, I wanted to highlight her brand from a marketing and communications perspective, what stands out primarily is her authenticity. At the core of her brand and business, her authenticity is what drives the following core messages and reasons for her being seen as the Face of Fashion Made In Africa:
Loza Maléombho is influenced by diverse surroundings
Loza Maléombho gains inspiration from her New York surroundings and African culture to create modern and avant-garde designs. Loza’s label originated in Abidjan and at the speed, she’s going it won’t take long for her clothes to take over the world.
Loza Maléombho acts Locally but Thinks Globally
By producing in the Ivory Coast, Loza’s mission is to empower women with a small manufacturing studio that gives jobs to young women from unpopular backgrounds to produce her womenswear clothing. She also works alongside local skilled professionals on featured products such as fabrics, shoes, and accessories. Loza uses fashion to give back to her community.
Loza Maléombho leverages social media to reach more People
She is a young artist so it is no surprise that she is an active participant in social media. However, Loza uses social media as a way to address and spread self-love by posting socially conscious selfies of herself and others on her Instagram. Even though Loza’s clothes are exceptionally exquisite they hold a deeper meaning and are more than just their beauty.
Loza Maléombho Stands for Social Justice
Loza features her extravagant headpiece designs in which she handcrafts for her Alien Edits on Instagram. Maléombho’s Alien Edits, the name of her digital marketing campaign, was created as a way to fight against the biased American judiciary system and their treatment towards the African-American race. Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Will Garner and now Walter Scott are the names of a few victims that unfortunately experienced the unjust justice system. Alien Edits were created to bring awareness to social issues that negatively divide the younger generation apart and one day will help conquer the alienation victims face due to factors they cannot control such as race, culture and gender. Loza not only connects her designs to her culture and history but strives to find the connection between her clothing and other cultures found in the beautiful continent of Africa.
Loza Maléombho ‘Oprahs” her Brand
Oprah is the champion of building a brand around herself, modeling on the cover of every edition of her magazine. Like Oprah, Maléombho usually models her own creations and uses herself as a muse for her clothing. Her designs are a reflection of her own personal style and can be best described as a mix of traditional and nontraditional cultures with contemporary styles. Loza’s clothing gives her a chance to express herself and use art to spread messages about self-love. Shoppers can find Loza’s womenswear clothing and other accessories on her website: http://www.lozamaleombho.com


Human #AF.
Sade Disu is known and sought after for her ability to leverage storytelling, data, and business operations with her innate understanding of the cultural consumers’ lifestyle attitudes.
She attributes this aforementioned attention (press and awards) to her grit for creating cross-cultural content, platform solutions, and activations that engage (what she coins) the ” multi-hyphenated millennial women.”
Her content strategies and live event platforms were deemed unmatched for its convening power of global content, culture, and empowerment according to Forbes, LA Times, Essence, and Black Enterprise. And even more, was given a proclamation, by former Mayor of New York (now Presidential candidate) Michael Bloomberg in 2010.
All in all, Sade has delivered award-winning and has been press ordained (had a 4-page press feature in Black Enterprise and 2-page press feature in Forbes French Edition for her global experiential marketing and digital work across various clients.
Brands like Kimora Lee Simons, Iman Cosmetics, Pikolinos, Zara, Roommate Hotels and USAID, immediately tapped into her three-tier prong approach “community, content, to commerce” when looking to connect with the cultural consumers.
Under her auspice, she managed a team of 25 and built a 10-year-old marketing and digital communication firm, responsible for offline and online platforms that connected brands to consumers organically and authentically.
The results increased brand awareness 8.5 million views; $300+ K in revenue generated per event (total of 3) for project sponsors, and performance beyond the expected for key performance indicators such as newsletter subscribers. Media giants such as Hearst Magazines caught wind of her competencies — the ability to connect to cultural consumers through content and experiential solutions– and immediately hired her agency to build and produce its international spin-off of COSMO (which Disu also helped cultivate and manage editorial teams for).