'I Loved Those Clothes - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie' - Www.BellaNaijaStyle.Com

My much-older sisters, Ijeoma and Uche, were stylish figures, one in medical school and the other studying pharmacy, and I spent my teenage years wearing their hand-me-downs.

 

I remember a silver-coloured skirt suit from the conservative Ijeoma, with an elegantly adult peplum.

 

I wore it to church at 15.

 

And from the more inventive Uche, a fitted dress in cream jersey, two sashes draped in front, from shoulder to hip, crossing at the middle.

 

And black harem trousers, with ruching that gathered at my calves, so strange that my classmates giggled when I wore them to a friend’s birthday party.

 

I loved those clothes, incongruous though they might have been.

 

In them, I felt free of self-consciousness, comfortable enough to laugh along to the well-meaning puzzlement of my peers.

 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wearing Moofa