By Ila Ananya
If you’ve been following Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Instagram, you must have seen her wearing some beautiful and colourful clothes for all her public appearances.
There’s everything, from Lola Baej, to Ms Beefab, to a lot of clothes by Style Temple by OG Okonkwo, but what’s common between them is that they’re all Nigerian brands or designers. In a new Facebook post, Adichie has announced that this is part of her project ‘Wear Nigerian’.
Adichie writes that the Nigerian government’s disastrous economic policies led to a reduction in the value of the Naira, badly affecting the middle class. Nigeria’s economy has slipped into a recession for the first time in many years, and since then, the government has been trying to save its currency. And one thing the government has actively been promoting is #BuyNaijaToGrowTheNaira.
In the last few weeks, Adichie, whose clothes we have never been able to stop staring at, says, she’s bought more Nigerian brands than ever, particularly those whose focus is clothes for Nigerian women. She’s “changed quite a few dodgy zippers” and discovered new names, and as she writes, “Overall, I love the clothes, their cut, their whimsy, their colour, their flair, their ability to make me feel like myself.”
And while her Instagram account is thoroughly enjoyable to follow just for all these clothes, perhaps this is also a good time to revisit her lovely essay for Elle, ‘Why Can’t a Smart Woman Love Fashion?’ on her years of dressing down in the hope of making the right impression to be taken seriously, to the moment she stopped doing this.