Glamsquad Magazine Jan 2023

FEATURE
women’s clothes have pockets,
usable pockets that did not
impinge on style? And why were
so many dresses sleeveless?
And where did adult women for
whom attractive did not equal
too tight shop? And why did the
style of so many dresses assume
the absence of non-flat breasts?
When I found clothes I liked, I
longed to tweak them.
I began to resist some
standard ideas and language
of global — which is to say
narrowly western — fashion.
The depiction of bright colours
as bold or daring, black as
the unimpeachable hallmark
of sophistication, and beige
as neutral, for example, were
based on a specific pale-skinned
standard. For a dark-skinned
person, blue might be a better
black, brighter colours more
ordinary than daring, and neutral
negotiable. My greatest gripe
was with the word “modest”,
used to describe clothes for
what they were not — short
or body-baring — rather than
for what they were. “Modest”
brought a moral, frumpy taint
to what was often an aesthetic
choice. I loved midi lengths
because I found them sexy,
sleeves because they were more
flattering, higher necklines for
their air of confident chic.
I designed my own clothes,
and my tailor, Razak, made them
in Lagos. Razak was talented and
distracted and unreliable. He was
also convinced that he was an
undiscovered music star. It was
2016 and Nigeria’s economy
was in chaos. President Buhari’s
government had instituted a
retrograde currency policy, the
value of the naira plummeted,
and suddenly everyone was
talking about “buy Nigerian
products to grow the naira”.
The political rhetoric gave
me an idea: what if I wore only
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