Transforming the cultural dressing of the Igbo people

Beautiful Igbo outfit
Credit to ADEDOYIN
In the olden days, before the White men colonized the southeastern of Nigeria, generally known as the Igbos, our style of ethics and the code of dressing were pretty different from what we are seeing today.

During the late 60s and 70s, our young women typically used to wore wrappers and beads around their waist, and the young men used the napkins or wrapper while the older ones tie the wrapper around their waist.

The Igbo girls would tie beads on their legs with some unique diagrams on many parts of their bodies. Local materials used for beautification then was colored chalks (known as uhie in the Igbo language).
Again, they apply ground black lead on their eyelashes.

Believe me, I must tell you that even with the local make-up, our ladies would always look elegant even though there was no modern make-up
available to enhance how they appear.

When the recent methods of dressing were introduced in the Igbo land, our forefathers would always complain that putting on attire employed by the white men was to tamper with their natural body and Chineke (Igbo name for God the Creator) would never be pleased with such notion.

Our forefathers had the belief that women were supposed not to cover their whole body with the recent outfitting arranged by the foreigners. Hehe,
Hence, any lady caught in foreign attire would be considered as a person who doesn't love the way his/her body was made. Hilarious right?

Clearly, the Igbo ladies love plaiting their hair so much. One can say that the Igbo girls don't joke when it comes to decorating their hair. Hehe
They have different methods by which they beautify their hair and each method has a particular name assigned to it.

Well today, what is the case? The modern dressings have dominated and overshadowed our cultural way of life!!

As of then, we had numerous locally produced decorating tools like color chalks and lead which we used for drawing on the body.

Even the boys do beautify themselves to an extent. This practice of drawing carried out by the boys was to indicate their maturity and readiness of getting a spouse.

Some of the diagrams commonly found on the male bodies were lizard, tortoise or any other animal found often in the environment. And the part where the drawings were made might be on the chest, stomach, or the laps.

In conclusion, our code of dressing back then was indeed awesome but it's quite unfortunate that the environment and other aspects have altered these ethics.