October 03, (THEWILL) – On Wednesday, September, 22, 2021, fashion icon, Shade Thomas-Fahm, clocked 88 years. She was serenaded by her children, fashion designers and guests as she marked her birthday. The aged woman also launched her Shade Thomas-Fahm Legacy Project (STFLP) at the Capital Club, Victoria Island. The event featured an exhibition. A larger exhibition has been scheduled to take place before the end of the year and it will feature 30 Nigeria designers, who are expected to display their wears and talents.
Project STFLP tells the larger-than-life story of Thomas-Fahm and her iconic fashion label, Shade’s boutique which proudly flew the Nigerian flag both locally and internationally. It also includes the public launch of the 15th edition of Faces of She, the Shade Thomas–Fahm memoir and a publication of a coffee table book of vintage photographs, w hich is a catalog of Nigerian styles that were popular back in the days.
Shade Thomas-Fahm, was a force to reckon with in the Nigeria fashion scene of the 1960s and 1980s. Her influence and creativity laid the foundation of the Nigerian fashion industry as she scored many firsts as a designer of repute.
A former president of the Fashion Designers Association of Nigeria (FADAN), Thomas-Fahm started a modeling career abroad and acquired fame as a black model. She studied at the St Martin’s College of Art and Design, United Kingdom where she qualified as a fashion designer in 1959.
Upon her return to Nigeria in 1960, she became the first modern fashion designer in Nigeria. She is also one of Nigeria’s first women industrialists to establish a clothing factory in Yaba, Lagos, which had equipment for embroidery. She was also the first Nigerian to make use of mannequins in her shop at the Federal Palace Hotel. Her work revolutionised women’s way of dressing in Nigeria. She glamorised the use of locally woven materials and dyed textiles to make contemporary styles worn by the Nigerian elite back in the days. She transformed iro and buba into wrapper skirts and originated boubou, a style she created when she feminised the male agbada for women. She also adapted the gele tied by women into a pre-tied head-dress.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London will also be celebrating the style icon as a fashion vanguard in an exhibition titled ‘Africa Fashion’. The event will run for four years around the world. After the event, six of her designs will be stored at the museum as part of their permanent collections so that historians, academics and fashion designers can study her works.
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