Some of the materials used for the cloth used to make Nigerian clothing are lace, jacquard, adire, tie dye, ankara, and others. Later on, I plan to have descriptions of some of the materials that are used to make Nigerian clothing.
I do not know if the following clothing pieces are traditional outside of the Yoruba culture, but if they are, I’m sure they have different names. I will try to describe the different pieces of clothing, and there is a labeled picture after the discussions to illustrate them.
For women, there are the following pieces of clothing:
buba – a loose neck blouse, usually long sleeves, and usually long enough to go a little past the waist.
iro – the bottom part of the outfit. Unfolded, it looks like a plain rectangular sheet, but when worn it is wrapped around the waist, and folded to stay in place.
gele – this is the headpiece. Unfolded, this also looks like a smaller plain rectangular sheet, but it can be folded or tied in a variety of different ways. For example, the following pictures are from the exact same piece of cloth:
gele1 gele2
iborun or ipele – this is an extra ‘scarf piece’, which can either be tied around the neck, or can be tied so that it goes diagonally across the body.
kaba – this is a one-piece dress that can range between many many different styles.
For men, there are the following pieces of clothing:
buba – this is also a loose neck shirt, usually long enough to go halfway down the thighs.
sokoto – these are the lower part of the men’s clothing, the pants, or the trousers, or whatever you want to call them.
fila – this is the round cap that is slid on the head.
abeti-aja – this is another kind of cap, where the sides of the cap are made longer into a triangular shape, and then folded up. (Translated to English, this name means “like the ears of a dog”.)
agbada – on really festive occasions, men wear this over their buba and sokoto. It is a wide armed piece of clothing, usually with a V-shaped neck, and long enough to reach the floor. The arms are so long that they need to be bunched together when worn.
You can see most of the pieces of clothing in the following modified picture of my loving parents:
parts of clothes
These are the traditional pieces of clothing. Of course, we also wear more western clothes like suits, dresses, skirts and blouses, baseball caps, etc. etc. Also, jewelry is usually worn with the clothing in the case of women.
If you would like to see some other pictures, here are a few. Click on an image for a larger view.
Also, view these photos from my sister Bowale’s collection.
pic1 pic6 pic4
pic7 pic5 pic3
pic2 pic8 pic9
pic10 two ladies pic
I would like to duplicate the above description with clothing items worn by Ibos, Hausas, and others; but I need help with that.
If you need them right now, you can always try your luck with some other links, or try the links on the people page, which has links to Ibo pages and links to Hausa pages.
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