Mary Nnah
A fusion of fashion and arts was seen recently during an exhibition titled, “Adorn”. The exhibition, jointly held by Founder, Finicky Stitches, Jevbe Obiomah Utho, and an artist, Enifoghale Agodo of Nifty Agodo, was a showcase of sheer creativity. The collaboration brought forth a beautiful array of Nigerian-made fabrics and artworks whose motifs were predominately Nigerian.
Speaking at the event on the crossroads for fashion and arts, the designer, Jevbe Obiomah Utho of Finicky Stitches, said, “Same creativity, same craziness; you have to be thinking out of the box and be a little bit different; you have to search within yourself to be a good fashion designer or artist.”
Obiomah whose designs were displayed alongside Agodo artworks showcased made-in-Nigeria fabrics and accessories. She said, “All the designs here today have a Nigerian motif. They are made with the Nigerian mentality. Nigeria is bold and audacious; you cannot suppress us. No matter how bad things are, we move on.”
Obiomah’s designs are inspired majorly by women: “I am a designer for women. I feel that women have been marginalised and put down in one way or the other, so when I am designing, I design with aggression that this woman must stand out, this woman must take her place, and that this woman must have confidence, so, that is the mentality I use in designing my clothes – even if nothing else, let her stand out from wherever she finds herself.
“Beautiful and good things come from Nigeria, so I am using Nigerian fabric and these are made in Nigeria products and they are good enough to compete in any market”, she noted.
Speaking further on the relevance of the joint exhibition, she said, “I want to gain more visibility with this exhibition. My brand has been in existence for a long but has been very quiet for some time. I just want to gain visibility to say, we are very much around. Even though our customers know that we are around, we need more people to know we are still very much around. We are here to do business and also to promote what is Africa and we are not ashamed to do it.”
Although the fashion brand has been around for a while, it was the first time the artist, Enifoghale Agodo, was holding an in-house exhibition.
For Agodo, African arts, including artworks and fabrics are going international and Nigerians should move with the tides and take advantage of it so that talented Nigerians don’t have to move out of the country.
“We need more people and platforms supporting locally made products so that we can all benefit from Africa going international,” she added.
Agodo who described the joint exhibition as a huge success noted that it did not just offer them the avenue for sales but also offered a whole lot of opportunities.
“In the next few years, I am not going to be just doing local exhibitions but going international. That is an opportunity I don’t think I would have gotten if I didn’t take the chance to do this particular exhibition,” she noted.
