In many higher institutions, fashion styles, such as colour rioting and colour squashing, have been the trend, especially among the female students. The fad of colour blocking started some years back in the United States when celebrities donned various combinations of colour for red carpet events.
American celebrities like Kim Kardashian made appeared in the public wearing orange and purple. Soon, many began to catch the bug and it spread across continents like a wild fire.
One-time American editor of Vogue, Liz Tilberis, said: “A love of fashion makes the economy go round.”
Perhaps, there is an iota of truth in the aphorism given the sophisticated level Nigerian girls have taken colour blocking to.
At the University of Calabar (UNICAL), for instance, a female hand bag that costs between N4,500 and N6,000 is matched with a pair of jean and expensive tops of varying colours. Girls can go wrong if the colours are too much, or else they end up looking like a rainbow.
Wearing different colour in a way that will not be offensive brings attention by making one look colourful and cheerful. Some wear it because it is trendy. Colour blocking, to me, is creativity because it expresses oneself in whatever colour one can combine. It is the trend that commands people’s attention. But the ugly part of it is that some abuse the trend, wearing colours that make the face blanch.
For instance, this writer was invited by a friend to a fellowship sometime ago. Suddenly, a lady, wearing a sleeveless V-neck black gown with a white scarf, walked in. The attire hardly buried her cleavage. As she walked, she tried to pull the gown down as though she was forced to wear it.
Perhaps, she noticed the attention on her, her handkerchief dropped. Instead of bending down to pick it, she opted to squat and picked it in order not to further expose some sensitive parts of her body. It took her minutes to do this and obviously it was stressful for her. She was not comfortable in what she was wearing.
As she walked to sit in one of the seats at the extreme of the hall, every eye was on her. The male students at the event were all disappointed because the young lady did not cause to happen, the entertainment they had expected.
Then my question: why are girls putting discomforting clothes when there is nothing to gain in them? From experience, the reason may have been to gain “attention” and “attraction”. Once they dress shabbily and revealed their sensitive organs, men start to fall over themselves to “watch film”. When skimpily dressed ladies notice glances from men, they try to cover their body. But who forced them to dress provocatively?
A few days ago, I was discussing about fashion trend with a female student in my department, the girl told me that ladies ought to dress for their own comfort. But the kind of dresses female students put on nowadays shows the opposite. I believe that majority of girls wear skimpy dresses just to feel among. They feel like ‘this is in vogue’ and ‘I must not be counted out’.
There are times when girls put on a low-waist clothes and struggle to cover their back waist as they walk or when they want to ride on motorcycle or in the class. Some wear miniskirts and try to pull it to cover their thigh as they walk. Others wear transparent clothes that reveal their sex organs. To me, such dresses are needless in academic environment.
In the rainy season, instead of wearing long sleeves or sweat shirts, some ladies will put on sleeveless clothes trying to imitate what they saw on television. Recently, I observed a girl at the Faculty of Education, who likes to wears high-heel shoes to school. After sometime, she brought out a pair of slippers from her handbag. When I asked why she wanted to change the high-heel shoes, she said: “I like wearing high heels because it brings up my hips and makes me more attractive to guys. But shoes always hurt my toe; that is why I changed to flat sandals.”
I don’t have problem with new trend in fashion but I consider indecent dressing as inappropriate because it often leads to rape and sexual harassment. If a girl dresses indecently and calls it fashion, it means she is tempting men to look at her direction, the end result of which may not be palatable for her.
Stanley, 500-Level Accounting, UNICAL
