Sunny Dolat is a Nairobi-based creative director, fashion curator, and cultural producer, best known as a co-founder of The Nest Collective. His practice spans fashion, film, music, and visual arts, often interrogating identity, culture and representation across the African continent.
Dolat has gained international recognition for his curatorial and performative work that challenges narrow definitions of “African fashion”. His projects including large-scale installations like In Their Finest Robes, The Children Shall Return, bring together designers from across all 54 African countries, foregrounding diversity and inclusivity.
Dolat approaches art and fashion as tools to confront conservative narratives, particularly through The Nest Collective’s interdisciplinary work.
At the 25th edition of the Design Indaba Conference, Dolat delivered a performance-led presentation that expanded the boundaries of fashion beyond aesthetics. By combining ritual, textiles and movement, he reframed fashion as a cultural, spiritual and political language.
Through his talk and work, Dolat calls for a more nuanced understanding of African fashion, one that recognises creativity across the entire continent. He provoked the audience to rethink assumptions, arguing that fashion is not superficial but deeply expressive, even spiritual: a way of engaging with beauty, identity and presence.
