Mai Atafo
Fashion designer, Mai Atafo, tells Ademola Olonilua why he left the corporate industry to become a fashion designer
Why are you always clean shaven?
When I shaved my hair a long time ago, my
girlfriend at the time decided to marry me. So in order to keep her, I
thought that I should maintain the hair style. I like it because I think
it is easier to maintain.
I think that as you grow older, you tend to
do things that you are more comfortable with. I am not that comfortable
with my beard but my wife likes it. I am growing it for her but at the
end of the year, I am taking it off. I have kept it for two years and
that was our deal.
You are always wearing three piece suits. How many of them do you have in your wardrobe?
If I tell you I do not know, that would
be the truth. Apart from my wardrobe in the house, I have another one in
the office. As I make suits for clients, I make for myself which I keep
in my personal wardrobe in the office. So I don’t know the number of
suits that I have but, I don’t think I have less than 30 suits.
How come you hardly wear African attire?
I do wear natives and I make them too.
Funny enough, the time I wear them are not the times I make public
appearances. Most times I wear them when I go to church and these days, I
wear them on Fridays.
What was your recent fashion show, Savilrow, about?
I would take you back to history; the
English man makes the suits. There is a street in Mayfair, London,
called Savilrow. It is a street known for producing the best suits in
the world, literally.
That craftsmanship has been going on for over 200
years. What they have done is, as time goes by, they try to modify the
way the suits are made to suit recent trends and comfort. It is supposed
to be a master-school for suits making. What I did recently is that I
brought to Nigeria a master tailor, who has over thirty years of
experience in making suits on Savilrow to train me and my guys for two
weeks on how to make perfect Savilrow English bespoke suits.
He came
here with all the tricks of the trade and he trained us on exactly how
to cut a suit. If you can cut a suit to international standard, then you
are making a suit for the world. I try to be the best there is in the
world. I don’t see Nigeria as my boundary, I see the world as my village
and I want the whole village to know about me.
The man I brought has
made clothes for everyone in the royal family apart from the queen, top
actors like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Halle Berry, among others. Right now,
we are Savilrow Academy certified, the only one in Africa. It means
that the suits we make are better, lighter and more comfortable. We
spend 80 hours making a suit but the end result justifies the means.
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.
When it comes to fashion, what is your weakness?
It changes. At a point in time, it was my glasses but I think now it is my shoes.
What is the highest amount you have paid for a pair of shoes?
I am not very lavish when it comes to
things like that, the most expensive pair of shoes I have bought cost
about £300 and that is about N75,000. I am very prudent when it comes to
spending
Your line of work makes you deal with a lot of women, doesn’t your wife feel threatened?
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.
What were the challenges you faced starting your business?
To start with, there was no platform to
be mentored or mentor people about fashion. Apart from that, there is no
support from the government and power supply is my biggest problem. All
my machines are industrial machines and they need to keep working so I
pay at least N200, 000 every month to make sure I have power.
When stepping out for an occasion, what do you bear in mind?
I dress for the occasion. Whatever the function is, I know what it is and make sure my dressing suits that.
Via: Punch
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