I refused to wear sneakers outside a gym. I walked more often in America, so I wore fewer high heels, but always made sure my flats were feminine. A lover of dresses and skirts, I began to wear more jeans. I made slight amendments to accommodate my new American life.
Still, I realized quickly that some outfits I might have casually worn on a Nigerian university campus would simply be impossible now. Summer shorts were so short they seemed like underwear, and how, I wondered, could people wear rubber flip-flops to school? I was used to a casualness with care-T-shirts ironed crisp, jeans altered for the best fit-but it seemed that these students had rolled out of bed in their pajamas and come straight to class. When I left home to attend university in America, the insistent casualness of dress alarmed me. Related: Why Do I Have To Defend My Decision to Wear Fur? Ours was a relatively privileged life, but to pay attention to appearance-and to look as though one did-was a trait that cut across class in Nigeria. My mother did not always approve of these clothing choices, but what mattered to her was that I made an effort. My tailor, a gentle man sitting in his market stall, looked baffled while I explained it to him. For my 17th birthday, I designed a halter maxidress, low in the back, the collar lined with plastic pearls. I once wore my brother's tie, knotted like a man's, to a party. I took a pair of her old jeans to a seamstress who turned them into a miniskirt. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to playĪs a teenager, I searched her trunks for crochet tops from the 1970s.
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