Youthful Fashion

Imagine being invited for an interview one day, and I arrive at the venue dressed in baggy jeans with a very bright colored shirt and long necklace to match the color of my shoe lace. Well, if I was going for a friends rag-party, this wouldn’t have been too bad a dress sense, but for a corporate job interview? Duh!

How do you choose what you wear? Does the society, media or religion determine what you should wear for every occasion? Or are you one of the few Denrele Edun of this generation that design and dictate what you wear?

I won’t really count myself as a fashion freak, but I never seem to be amazed on how new trends flood our culture everyday. Between the western culture and Nigerian culture, we do not know who is even competing with whom. Our local designers are striving hard to keep up with the demands for tasteful styles that appeal to young people.

Nothing could be more appealing than taking your material to your seamstress and in return a few days later you have a neatly cut out piece suitable for all occasion. So there, right then and there you sign up to patronize our traditional materials and drop the hustle after western clothes. Which by the way do not really have any better design than does not go beyond low-waist jeans and belly-showing blouses for ladies?

By the way, are our guys now patronizing low waist Jeans? Okay, that is me going off to the extreme. We all know guys sag. But do we all know it is because they are ignorant of the origin of sagging? I do not think it is style. Perhaps you have also heard they story about the prisoners who were literarily forced to go everywhere without a belt while in prison, thus, after they got out, they never got used to holding their trousers with belt and went around that way, obviously, the ignorant ones decided to emulate the culture. And that was how the sagging style came to be.

I do not have any definition for dress sense. I think everyone has got a good dress sense but it is just the timing that differs. For instance, there will be nothing wrong in wearing a hooded sweat-shirt in a very cold weather but wearing it during one of those hot days in Lagos? Or wearing a bikini-like-see-through gown to “the House of God?” I think that is a deliberate attempt to confuse the service that day.

We youths must learn to dress the way we want to be address. Wear the right clothes at the right time. Like my friend would say,”Dress for success everyday” because you will only get a first chance to make your first impression with your dress culture. You don’t have to move with the flow… build your trend.