The designer Jacques Agbobly has a way of turning memory into material. His Spring/Summer collection, “Pentagames,” is stitched together from fragments of a childhood in Lomé, Togo—soccer under flickering streetlights, mancala carved into the earth, the heavy weight of oversized “abloni” clothes passed down, and the mix of joy and grief inside Bar Happy Land, his aunt’s gathering place. On the runway, those recollections didn’t read as nostalgia but as a living, breathing vocabulary of play, ritual, and survival.

The show opened with FC Harlem athletes styled in Nike, moving with precision as they passed a ball down the catwalk. It was part sport, part invocation, a reminder that games are often rehearsal spaces for resilience. As the ball rolled off stage, the set revealed itself: a scul

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