Elements of culture such as traditional religious practices and customary notions of beauty, grooming, and embellishment influence contemporary fashion styles. I started my “Spiritually Fashionable” project in 2020 when I went to document a religious festival called “Anyodolu Festival” in Badagry Lagos, Nigeria. My initial aim was to document cultural practices for historical purposes but then I was caught up in how fashionable the religious figures of this festival were looking. Documenting religious figures compels me to ask: What is indigenous fashion, fabric, and style? Is there such thing as spiritual fashion or style? Are there costumiers and couturiers for religious figures?
By juxtaposing religious figures called “Egúngún” with models wearing contemporary African fashion, I invite my audience to visualize the Egúngún as a fashion spectacle and aim to show how belief systems, tradition, and culture shape contemporary fashion styles. My choice of juxtaposing male masquerades with female models as complements in my digital collages is a deliberate attempt to create a gender-based antithesis. While the Egúngún’s parade appears to be a predominantly masculine affair, women play major roles in creating these fashionable masterpieces, which is part of what I project through these works. Egúngún denotes a figure in a wholly masked fanciful costume. While most persons think of the Egúngún only in its extraordinary, spiritistic terms as the object of Yorùbá ancestor reverence or the metaphysical presence of religious entities, the Egúngún is an important element in the religion and (material) culture of the Yorùbá people of West Africa and beyond.
With “Spiritually fashionable” I bring Egúngún’s couture into sharp relief in a critical and novel way by promoting an appreciation of the religious figure for its fashionable charm, and aesthetics. Thinking of religious figures in this way forces us to critically evaluate our definitions of what constitutes indigenous fashion, native fabric, traditional style, and local attires.