Uber fabulous fashion designer Mai Atafo who has dressed some of entertainment’s biggest name’s from Rita Dominic, to Genevieve Nnaji, Stephanie Okereke, Omotola Jalade, Omowunmi Akinifesi, Muba Abii, Kate Henshaw, Waje, and many more, in a new interview with Punch revealed the reason why he left the corporate industry to become a fashion designer and how his wife feels about him having to deal with a lot of women. Read excerpts below...
How did you get into fashion designing?
"I was not one of those that had an interesting story. I just loved nice clothes as a young person but I did not go into fashion designing like that. I studied Agricultural Economy and Extension for my first degree at Edo State University and my second degree was at City University, London, where I studied Information System Technology. I got back into the country in 2002 and I worked with the British American Tobacco for about four years. Then I moved to Guinness Nigeria Plc where I worked for about four years. I left there in 2010 as senior brand manager before I went into fashion full time. I started the fashion business when I was in Guinness but when I could no longer combine the two, I decided to go for fashion full time."
How did you cope with the change, leaving a reputable job to becoming a fashion designer?
"There were times I was down and asked myself if I made the right decision. I came in from a very mediocre point whereby I loved what I was doing and I went to do it. But fashion is not just a passion; it is a business. As long as you are not on top of your game business-wise, you are just making a fool of yourself. The most important thing in fashion is that you design things and people buy, give you money so that you can do more.
Without that exchange of money, nothing is going to happen to you. People look at it as making clothes but they are wrong. You are making money, you are a trader who trades in clothing. I call myself a trader, I make clothes to sell. The most important thing is that you are a businessman. When I left Guinness to pursue this, I did not go to pursue only business but a passion. The only thing that kills passion is poverty."
How come you make clothes mostly for celebrities?
"It is because they like what I do. They come to me, I don’t go to them. Everybody likes beautiful things, when they see beautiful things, they want them, when they want a beautiful thing, they come to me and that is the true story. There is nobody that I have clothed right now that I have actually gone to knock at their door asking them to wear my stuff. I don’t think that there is anybody that has a name that I have not clothed in the industry."
“Think about it this way, if your job entails you work with a lot of men, would your wife think you are a gay? I think everything boils down to the individual. If you are put in a situation whereby there could be compromise, it would have to depend on you. If you work in a brewery, it does not make you a drunk, neither are you a chain smoker because you work in a tobacco factory. That you work with a lot of women does not mean you should be frivolous. It depends on you at the end of the day. Anybody can exercise an element of fear sometimes but I think it largely depends on the individual.”
Read the full interview here.
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