I think I’ve always been interested in clothes. Originally, as a young girl, I realized the way I dressed could act as a sort of armor. I was born in America but I lived in Nigeria for two years, from the age of five to seven and when I came back to America, I had an accent, I was dark-skinned, I was differ- ent, so I got teased a lot. Somewhere around middle school, I realized that because of how I dressed, people didn’t neces- sarily say I was cool, but they would compliment me. So, I started caring about clothes.

In high school, I started reading magazines and watch- ing The Style Network, and going vintage shopping with my sisters. And the intention behind me dressing a certain type of way morphed from being a kind of protection to being a desire for me to exist in my own world, to let clothes speak for me.

Some people probably think I dress weird, but I think for me, I like to look good, and I’m the one who determines what looks good. My style is very material. It’s eclectic and eccen- tric, but also that’s how I think people describe it. I like to “dress up”, and I see that in quotations because to me, it’s not really dressing up. To me, it’s just like wearing what I want to wear.