The Heineken Lagos Fashion and Design Week is so close I can practically smell it. And by the Gods, my body is ready. I am ready for the four day fashion frenzy, the rude, frazzled designers running around like headless chickens, the editors flown in from around the world gazing down at our interns and editors bending over backwards to ensure they get the ‘best’ view of ‘Africa’. I’m even ready for the swamped streets filled street style fashion bloggers and gawkers all looking to snatch that elusive 15 seconds of fame.
But what I am looking forward to (sans the runway shows) is the fashion bloggers.
Nigerian fashion bloggers literally pull magic out of their asses each fashion week. Our designers have their heads so far up theirs that literally no one wears them at the galleys and in the audience but someone our bloggers manage to set themselves apart and ever so often dictate future trends. But while we get it right a lot of the time, we also suffer from the herd mentality of our industry professionals and everyone ends up looking like clones of each other. So here are five things we should let go of this fashion cycle.
SUITS
This is a crime of fashion I lay squarely at the feet of our Male fashion bloggers. You see them at every fashion event in a boring two piece suit, or three if they are extra stuffy walking around like they just escaped their boring desk jobs at some new generation banks. The ‘adventurous’ ones will wear a suit in a some ridiculous print, or worse velvet or corduroy.
Don’t know how to break it to you, but wearing a suit doesn’t make you fashionable. No matter how many brooches and multicoloured socks you accessorize with. Suits do not require imagination or innovation, they are boring, staid, done. So please rest the suits and actually do some thinking.
OFF SHOULDER ANYTHING
Yes, we know that every single Nigerian/west African designer under the sun has jumped on this off shoulder/cold shoulder trend. And yes there are a handful of yummy options that don’t make you look like you raided your grand mother’s closet. But you, my darling, are a fashion blogger. You don’t hop on trends, you make them. And the Cold Shoulder trend has been hopped on, dragged through the mud and run to the ground.
LET IT GO! Make a new trend.
THE JERSEY BODYCON DRESS
Yes, we know your body is banging, yes we know you’ve got legs from here to Cairo. We are quite aware, we follow your blog, we follow your social media. You’re hot, we know. But the Lagos Fashion and Design Week, and any fashion week actually is a great opportunity to present yourself in new ways, experiment with styles and designs you would ordinarily never bother with. It is time to try that fur coat that everyone keeps rolling their eyes about and making snide remarks about our weather, it’s time to dress up in men’s clothing, obscure that figure that is your selling point and show them your highlight is popping.
Bodycon dresses are boring, unless they are made by Uju Offiah’s Meena. And even then you can’t afford her, so again bodycon dresses are boring. Experiment, try out new things.
CHOKERS
This one seems a little unfair, after all chokers just really came in to trend a few months ago, and Kimmy just made DIY denim chokers a thing. But yeah, please and please fashion bloggers, rest your chokers for this four day period. Unless you really, are absolutely 100 percent sure you won’t bump into someone else wearing the exact same choker you express delivered from Ali Express, just don’t do it.
But if not, find a necklace, or leave your neck bare, or get some temp tattoos, anything but that choker.
AFRO FUSIONS
Is there anything more annoying at Fashion Week than the people who attempt Afro-fusions? The ones that wear a dashiki over a pair of Jodphurs, or a voluminous ankara skirt underneath a very British cropped day jacket? I don’t want to see you wear an Agbada over a three piece suit, or make an authentic Irish costume out of Adire. Sure, like the chokers, a handful of you can pull it off, but the rest of you just look a damn mess.
What does it profit a man to get photographed, then get dragged all over the internet?
DUN DO IT!
BONUS
The whole skirt/dress and sneaker trend needs to die a million deaths. We are so tired of it, we are over it. LET IT GO!