The typical traditional African fashion and attire are normally a cultural definition of who they are and the environment in which they live. Prior to the arrival of the colonial masters, most Africans including Ndigbo, dressed nude and scantily based on highly the reflected aesthetic, moral, cultural standard of the people.
The traditional Igbo fashion and attire were mainly more cultural, ceremonial and leadership focused dressing. In the then traditional Igbo society, a good number of adults dress topless while children dress nude for everyday dressing. Men wore underwear (a thin strip of clothing wrapped round the waist like a belt and then passed between the legs and fastened behind. For ceremonial or weather appropriate dressing, men cover the upper part of the body with adjusted clothing passed under the right armpit and tied above the left shoulder. They wore traditional Igbo hat made entirely from wool.
Women wore short wrapper and cover their breast area with cloth tired around their chest area. They wore coiffure donned up into a crest in the middle of the head. Cam wood is rubbed lightly into their skin with black patterns drawn with uli all over their body. They also wore black necklace hung down in three coils just above their breasts. On the arms, they wore red and yellow bangles with four to five rows of jigida (waist beads) on the waist. Women traditionally carry babies on their backs with a strip of clothing binding the two with a knot at her chest, a practice used by many ethnic groups across Africa. This is still practice by some women till today.
Children wore nothing from birth untill puberty, but wore ornaments and sand beads around the waist. Their body is decorated with patterns and shapes with Uli.
The traditional Igbo fashion and attire faced an enormous challenge with the arrival of the British colonists in the 1870s who thought that the traditional Igbo fashion and attire was too revealing and the ceremonial attire immodest. Through forced religious ideology, they introduced modesty onto the Igbo fashion sense to create a more prudent, decorative fashion and attire of today’s modern Igbo fashion and attire.
Following the British colonists influence on the Igbo fashion and attire, shirts and trousers over took everyday traditional clothing. For ceremonial dressing, the men typically wrap a large piece of cloth around the lower body and twisted into many folds at the waist. They wear Isiagu top which resembles the African Dashiki. Isiagu is usually patterned with lions heads embroidered over the clothing and some simply plain. Some people wear the Ishiagu with trousers. The traditional title holders wear skullcap or hat (a fez named okpu agu or agwu), or with the traditional Igbo stripped men's hat (which resembles the Bobble hat). Long robes are sometimes worn as well.
The women wear a loose blouse top or an embodied puffed sleeve blouse (influenced by European attire) with two wrappers (usually Akwete, lace and modern Hollandis material) wrapped around the lower body and folded at the waist, and a head scarf or piece of cloth folded around the head. The present women clothing are very colourful and used greatly to display personalities. No wonder the Akwete wrapper was famoues in the 20th-century.
Children presently wear simple shirt with trousers or shorts (boys) and simple tops, skirts or shorts (girls). The girls also wear dresses with jewelleries.
So the Igbo fashion and attire of today have involved over time and ndigbo all over the world now expresses themselves through more expensive and durable fabrics with more stylish clothing and attire.
