Thanks to Instagram and TikTok, there's renewed interest in what some are call the "golden era of Nollywood," and the gaudy fashion it's known for.
How This Particular Kind of Y2K Glam Became a Massive Trend Among Nigeria’s Gen Z
As Britney Spears and Destiny’s Child brought bootcut jeans, unnecessarily huge belts, and denim skirts onto the American red carpets in the early 2000s, a similarly gaudy sartorial story was playing out in Nigeria. In the late ’90s, Nigeria’s movie industry—or Nollywood, as it is often called—quietly began. The early 2000s saw the release of movies like Girls Cot, Sharon Stone, Blood Sisters, Abuja Connection, filled with the industry’s biggest stars from Genevieve Nnaji to Jim Iyke to Omotola Jalade to Regina Askia. Almost every movie focused on how being sexually promiscuous or otherwise vaguely immoral would lead to a sticky end as evidenced in Girls Cot and Billionaire Club. Though they were initially conceived as a cautionary tale, in retrospect, many of the “bad” boys and girls are some of the biggest style icons amongst young Nigerians today.
Consider one of the most instantly recognizable clips, from 2006’s Girls Cot. Alicia, played by actress Rita Dominic, walks to a trio of popular girls—think: The Plastics in Mean Girls—asking them if she can join them in attending a party. The obvious head of the trio, Benita Nzeribe’s Juliet cackles and says, “My friend, will you get out of this place? You stink with poverty!” Juliet has on two chunky bracelets, a pair of sunglasses that appear to be too big for her face, a very long necklace, and a shirt that might be a short dress worn with a pair of jeans. The acting is comical, the fashion is iconic, and the clip, thanks to Nolly.Babes, who first posted it to TikTok, is now viral. There are now thousands of TikTok videos recreating that scene, lip-syncing to the words and recreating the outfits.
Tochi Anueyiagu, 31 age, co-owns and runs Nolly.Babes with her sister, Ebele, 28. The Instagram and TikTok accounts, with 60,000 and 70,000 followers, respectively, are a digital archive of stills and videos from old Nollywood movies. As one of the first Instagram accounts dedicated to archiving old Nollywood, it has become instrumental in starting a resurgence of interest in fashion from this era. “It all comes down to nostalgia,” Tochi Anueyiagu shares over a Zoom call. ‘‘My sister [Ebele] and I grew up in Lagos, then we eventually moved to the U.K., and then the United States. Every summer when we’d go back to Nigeria, we would have people pack us a suitcase full of those Nigerian movie VCDs. It became our way of connecting to our Nigerian roots. As we grew up, it got to a stage where my sister and I were just exchanging images from Nollywood films as memes with each other. My sister was like, ‘let’s just start an Instagram page’ and that was how it started.’’
When many of these straight-to-video movies were first released, they were often considered poor and mediocre. However, young Nigerians are now retrospectively appreciating these movies, calling it “the golden era of Nollywood.” This is largely thanks to accounts like Nolly.Babes. It’s half nostalgia, half a defiant reclamation of the unflattering tropes. What first started as an ironic trend has turned into a full, earnest appreciation for the style of this era, exemplified by short denim skirts, blunt bobs, massive, bug-like sunglasses, bell-bottom jeans, and too many bracelets.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Vincent Desmond
