Covers

ASFA-award-winning Designer Mai Atafo Covers The Latest Issue of TheWill Downtown Magazine

By Isa King | November 16, 2022

Nigerian fashion designer Mai Atafo is on the cover of the latest issue of TheWill Downtown Magazine. The Abryanz Style and Fashion Award winner and menswear design extraordinaire looks extra dapper in a crisp teal double-breasted suit featuring a matching shirt sourced from his brand.

In the interview with DOWNTOWN’s Editor, Onah Nwachukwu, Atafo discusses the many challenges the fashion industry in Nigeria faces along with possible solutions as Atafo prepares for his first stand-alone show in 10 years.

Scroll down to read the excerpt from his interview with the magazine.

On why a business that has stayed over a decade needs to evolve:

Evolving is necessary to remain constant and relevant as a brand. Considering I started the business as a young boy without a proper business plan or understanding of how the brand should work or any of those things, evolution was eminent for my brand name because I have outgrown the names that the brand represented at every point in time. With more understanding of your brand’s business and market, you now know exactly how to place yourself and the brand.

On the buildup of the first alone fashion show for ATAFO after eleven years:

I think the show, Dream Wedding, was a platform to showcase my bridal collection. Because at a point in time, there was no fashion show dedicated to bridal. All you had was Fashion Week; sometimes, they showcased bridal, but it was never received correctly because that was not the audience for the product. So, funnily enough, my first Dream Wedding was the launch of the wedding brand, and two years later, we did the second collection that we did, and that’s how we did Dream Wedding 2.

But I didn’t feel the need to do another instalment of the wedding show after then. I felt like we could showcase the wedding collection in fashion shows or in the Lagos Bridal Week, which happened once. However, since that bridal week, I’ve also toyed with the idea of another Dream Wedding installation because it’s about time to do another one focused on that. We just have to run through the budget because now it would be RIDICULOUS. Knowing what weddings are these days because we re-acted real-life weddings. If we want to do it this time, we have to get the food, the owambe, the small chops.

Everything must be as good as a real wedding. But coming to the fact that I am doing my own stand-alone show, which is different from Dream Wedding, is that when you actually do the normal fashion shows as you did on the platform—Lagos Fashion Week or This Day’s Arise Fashion Week, the difference is that you’re not in control of the narrative.