Fashion Lost in Translation

Let me begin by stating upfront that the title of this posting is not originally mine. A young friend of mine who is like a little brother lives in the UK and visited home last Christmas and among his description of all that he observed upon arrival depicting that the aircraft landed in the right place - Lagos, Nigeria included this title...fashion lost in transition. It hit home when I read the text although I did not probe to find out what he saw that warranted the expression, it captured the fuzziness and confusion that had engulfed me about certain fashions and trends I have observed in recent times.

A couple of years ago, I recall going through the same confusion and wondered why I could not understand the fashion of boots in Lagos Nigeria. I recall it was about 2004/2005 or earlier, cannot quite remember now but there was a boot craze...work, church every where and some of them quite "out of fashion". In the countries where boot wearing is not just a fashion but a necessity and a tradition, there are boot "no dos" and "boot no go areas"... ankle boots has the stated clothes sytle you are to wear it with and so is knee high boot and all the other styles. When this fashion hit the Nigerian scene, there were no rules... anything went. I asked myself if the boot wearers knew that boot is actually a check for cold but my sister explained it to me as she would explain a lot more things about fashion in Nigeria to me. She said "weather has no part in our fashion here in Nigeria... if the trend is on, we just follow it, we do not ask questions or care about weather".

And so the boot came and went. Maybe it is is still being worn or maybe not but I do not get to see them anymore. Now you can imagine my confusion and apparent fashion ignorance a couple of months ago, I think about mid year 2009 when again my eyes were confronted with another fashion trend that I could not interpret. I am neither a society person nor a fashionista so it takes a while for me to know what is the trend... and I only know when the ordinary person or people have joined the band wagon and this group includes even the young girls selling in the open market.

On this bright sunny Friday of either July or August, I had bounced into the local branch of a bank to make some payments and noticed that every (I mean every...no exception) lady in the bank was wearing a sweater vest on a shirt. This bank is knowm for some strange people policies and because I do not typically go to the bank and have not been for over a year prior, I assumed right away that it was "the bank uniform". I truly concluded that maybe Friday casual was a major issue for them so they arrived at the sweater vest on a shirt worn over a pair of trousers. Such was my ignorance and such was my inability to make sense of the "uniform" especially since the bank was not that cold.

That weekend, I ran my observation by my sister again (she is a lot more fashion forward looking than myself) and I said "you know Bank so and so now have uniform for their employees" I even took offence in relaying this issue because I said it was only the women who had to wear this "uniform". When I was done describing it, she burst out laughing... boy did she laugh? I did not know what the laughter was about so I joined thinking she was thinking what I was thinking which was "how absurd" but nay, alas she was laughing at me and my fashion ignorance. She said it is no uniform but the fashion for a while now. I was lost...believe me, totally lost. I said "I must have been 'gone' too long. A couple weeks later, the church choir showed up with the same uniform... At this point, I gave up.

Now you know why when my young friend sent a text saying he knew he was home when he interpreted what he saw as fashion lost in translation made a whole sense to me and even more.