Nigerian-American beauty entrepreneur, Tolu Oye was recently featured on a new edition of Vogue magazine dedicated to celebrating Nigeria’s 59th year of independence.
The feature is tagged – “The Nigerian-American Siblings Using Traditional Family Portraiture to Celebrate Their Heritage”.
Tolu talks about growing up Nigerian in America and the role her Nigerian parents played in ensuring that she and her siblings grew up fully conscious of their Nigerian heritage.
On her mother’s culture-consciousness, Tolu shared; “As a child, I resented my mother’s love for Ankara and her desire to pass that love on to my siblings and me. I hated the way the rough texture rubbed against my skin and the looks I got for wearing it out in public. On Sundays, in preparation for church, my siblings and I would angrily rummage underneath our beds for our wrinkled traditional clothes, counting down the hours until we were able to return home and rip them off our bodies. We would all scurry to the car, hoping not to be seen by our neighbors, who always looked at us questionably whenever they saw us in our traditional attire.”
In the publication, she also revealed how her visit to Nigeria in 2012 with her family had helped her understanding of the importance of culture.
“It wasn’t until my mother forced me to take a trip to Nigeria, in 2012, that I began to understand the importance of home and the privilege of being able to return. As soon as we arrived in Nigeria, my grandmother invited all the children in the community to eat with us. One by one, she filled our plates with rice and stew, giving seconds and thirds, until we were all full and sitting comfortably in her front yard. For the first time, I saw my mother with her family, laughing and catching up on lost time—I thought it was beautiful. For the first time, I regretted all the years I had spent hating my culture.”
Tolu Oye is a fashion student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She later returned to Nigeria alone and spent three months with her grandfather, who showed her old photos of her family. And on returning to America, in February 2019, she gathered Nigerian friends and extended family and took a remake of the photos with them in fabrics that she cut and sewed herself.
Read full Vogue article here.
By: The Arubayi Keme
