Tolu Oye Talks Celebrating Heritage Using Traditional Family Portraiture

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By Funmilola Olukomaiya

Tolu Oye, a Nigerian beauty entrepreneur based in the US was recently featured in Vogueworld, American fashion bible.

In her chat with Vogueworld Tolu gets candid about growing up Nigerian in the States and the role that her Nigerian parents played in ensuring that she and her siblings grew up fully conscious of their Nigerian heritage.

According to her, “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 neighbours, who always looked at us questionably whenever they saw us in our traditional attire.”

Tolu Oye revealed that it wasn’t until her mother forced her to take a trip to Nigeria, in 2012, that she began to understand the importance of home.

She is a fashion student at the Fashion Institute of Technology

Read the full interview here

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