We had re-scheduled his interview for 7pm on a Tuesday. Not that I was expecting the chat to be a catwalk. But, I was getting tired of not meeting the ever-busy CEO of AOAFRIQ on seat.
After holding up for a few minutes, I was in Mr Agboola Odunfa’s office on Campbell Street, Lagos, chatting and throwing banters. His humour stuck out and that is what endears him to many people. Call him a dramatic fellow, you won’t be wrong. Like a new page, he was ready to be written on.
Odunfa, a communicator and unprofessional politician, who was a running mate of Labour party candidate for 2017 Chairmanship election on Lagos Island, East. He came into spotlight as a designer when EBay wanted to catch in on Made-In-Nigeria Products in fashion. His aim was a story to make money, but later on, the business minded man found passion in designing. Agboola is, no doubt, a reporter’s delight. He spoke with OLAJUMOKE GIWA. Excerpts:
I love what you have on, can I meet you?
I am Agboola Odunfa. I represent AOAfriq, a fashion outfit, that mixes Ankara with Denim.
Wow! That’s quite interesting. What can you tell me about your brand?
What we do is ready-to-wear clothing line and the base for our material is African print: Ankara, Batik, Adire and the likes. We mix all these with other materials like jeans, sweatshirt materials, jogger materials or lace to represent the modern wear like shirts, winter jackets, regular jackets, suits, trousers and other everyday wear, but they’re being represented with African prints.
Why did you choose fashion as a career?
It’s a passion I developed along the line; about three years ago. I was into construction and other technical jobs. It’s a passion I just developed and it’s been wonderful.
How did you make foray into fashion, what inspired the passion?
It’s actually business. If you want to do anything, the drive should be passion. Business brought me into this. I’m a businessman and fewer than three months into it, I developed the passion. I lost the zeal to make profit, but to grow the brand. Passion is what drives me because everywhere we go, whoever sees our brand is always attracted to it. It’s always acceptable. It’s outstanding. It’s unique.
Did you train professionally?
No.
So, how did you learn to make clothing?
I am creative. I don’t sew, but I design. I can look at anything and come up with a sketch. It could be in construction or in just anything. So, it’s there in me. Right from my primary school days, I did Arts even up to Secondary School. I practised Arts in the University. So, I have a background knowledge of how to create something new out of anything.
In the next few years, where do you see AOAfriq?
In the next 5 years, I want to be part of the top fashion designers who could create an acceptable code of dressing for Africa. Today, suits and tie are still the official wears. One day, somewhere and somehow, African print is going to replace the official wears in Africa and I want to be part of those who would make that happen in Africa, not just in Nigeria.
Why did you decide to relaunch your brand in October?
We need to reach larger audience with our top-notch new designs, which we have added and an opportunity to serve the new upgraded African print designs. We will be making new statement that connects every fashion lover from streets to offices, schools and palaces using our rare mix quality clothings
How do you keep up with fashion trends to make sure that you’re staying relevant?
It’s very easy. All you need to do is to monitor the style of dressing. If you want to see that, you watch international fashion shows, you watch African fashion shows and you also watch music videos. Those are where you see the current styles that are trending. All we do is that we keep in touch with all these and then recreate this brand with Ankara. If people want to dress for an event, what they see on TV is what is registered in their minds. So, all we do is to recreate those styles with Ankara and do a little tweak, so that the brand is identified with us and that’s how we keep up.
Generally, do you think that people are identifying with the African print?
If you watch TV, if you watch music videos and if you have seen Janet Jackson’s latest video, over 50 of her crew members including herself were putting on African print. If you saw the royal wedding, about 30 to 40 per cent of guests were putting on African print. So, it goes a long way to tell you that African print is taking over. If you go to the shops of these western brands, they are adding a bit of African print to what they’re doing because they know that in, no time, African print would be a tough challenge for them.
Being someone who is also into construction, do you plan to go into fashion fulltime or you’re just doing it as a side hustle?
It depends.
Where is your money coming from?
It’s from construction. That’s the major source of financing for the fashion brand. Once the brand grows enough to take me away from construction, then I’ll face it squarely.
Apart from financing being an obvious challenge, what are the other challenges you face in this business?
For instance, if you want to do 5 different styles, you need about 10 tailors to come up with 5 different styles?
Managing them is a challenge. If it is a design you want to make for an event or a delivery, keeping up with all of them and meeting up with the deadline are also a challenges. Also, there should support from the government for fashion designers and tailors as well. I would like to have a factory where I can control my designs and control the quantity of my materials and I can also control the detail. When I give my design to a factory to produce, you can’t expect everything to come out as expected. So, those are the challenges. It’s a Nigerian factor, but with time, things would normalise.
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