The Ever Evolving Fashion World

By Abraham Favour Olohigbe 

The world of fashion evolves constantly but there is no fashion trend that exists now that has not existed in another form in the past. Female wears have evolved in Nigeria, from oleku to iro and buba. Now the world of fashion has had a major overhaul.  It is near impossible to predict fashion trends.

Fashion amongst Gen Zs is based on the foundations that have been laid by other generations. Fashion everywhere evolves based on the culture and the influence other cultures. Places that were colonized have fashion items that originally belonged to their colonial masters, cultures where intermarriage is common are more likely to have fashion items and norms from several cultures.

 

In the late 90s and early 2000s, platformed heeled shoes popularly called ‘boogie boogie’ after the popular song boogie. These shoes had thick and high soles very similar to wedge heels. They disappeared for quite a while but now these days most women have a pair or two at home.

 

Men'scaps will not be overlooked There’s this cap that was jokingly named the bicycle seat cap which looks a lot like the seat of a bicycle was mostly seen on the elderly for a long but is now worn by many and called the Panama oldman's cap. Even suspenders that we once made jest of have been trending these days.Hairstyles aren’t left out from the Fulani braids to shukuto cornrows to afro can all be seen to have been for a very long time but are all revamped to fit into today’s society.

 Fashion trends may go out of season but they can never completely disappear.  Fashion trends are like gold, they go through the furnace of time just to shine brighter at the end of the purifying process. Remember the shoes we all wore in primary school and we thought they looked so ugly, you just might start seeing them very soon and they will look more beautiful than you remember. The things that were once called old school are trending every day in our world and the joke is on us. Solomon, a wise man, once said “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” This applies to fashion. You can go back a thousand years in time and still find traces of fashion styles today in our culture.