In an interview with Bored Panda, Oyinda Akinfenwa said that the idea to make a transformer dress that can be styled in 11 different ways came about when she started getting requests from people who don’t like wearing tight dresses.
“This inspired me to try something like this, then I realized, what if the person who prefers free dresses might like to try out something more fitted, which was why I decided to add the skirt to give them multiple options, which led to the making of this dress.”
When it comes to designing dresses, Oyinda is totally self-taught. “I got into designing because I was trying to make more clothes for myself, then I realized that I could actually do this for real, which made me start making more effort and putting in more work to make for other people and start my own brand.” Today, her brand, Janore, which specializes in multifunctional dresses, has 3.5k followers on its Instagram page, and her client audience is rapidly growing.
As for inspiration, Oyinda searches for ideas online, where she looks for various dress designs. “It helps me expand my personal fashion catalog,” she said.
Oyinda is already planning on expanding her dress portfolio and designing other types of clothing. “There’s so much you can do with fabrics and I can’t wait to get into it when I start expanding my brand, which I plan to do very soon. I’m planning on making my brand even bigger and better so that it actually serves everyone’s fashion needs.”
The Nigerian designer also said that she’s been getting a lot of support from kind people that she genuinely appreciates: “it definitely keeps me going.”
“And customers really love the dresses, they love the fabrics and also the neatness of the sewing, which makes me really glad because I put so much thought and energy into making sure my designs are well-made and perfect for my customers.”
