Patience Torlowei became the first registered lingerie manufacturer in Nigeria in 2009 with “Patience Please,” a line designed to “compliment a woman's inner beauty and self-respect.” It opened three years after she launched her own dress line, Patience Torlowei. Both industries are currently located in Lagos, where she hires young unemployed men and women and provides them with professional training. The resulting designs are created with consideration to environmental, social and corporate governance issues. As a result, Torlowei was invited to participate in the “Earth Matters, Fashion Matters” fashion show that took place at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art on February 22, 2013. Eight African designers, based in the US, Europe, and Africa, were invited to create new fashions that addressed themes of environmental sustainability and employed sustainable materials. “Esther” was the centerpiece of her presentation.
“Esther” is a stunning formal gown of gold silk and painted canvas, named for the artist’s mother who passed away the month before she began work on the gown. The artist contends that her mother’s spirit passed on to this gown. As she says, “Esther is much more than a dress. She is a force” (interview, August 12, 2014). The gown itself consists of layers: a petticoat, and then the silk gown which includes an over-skirt to which the canvas paintings have been attached, and the underskirt of luminous gold silk. Gold is a material harvested from the earth of Africa, and it is a color representative of the riches and potential of the continent. Over this are paintings of scenes from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Congo, and South Africa that depict the blood lost and hardships suffered as a result of civil war, conflict diamonds, oil extraction, and other mining practices. Torlowei describes how she dreamt of the composition and then worked with a Congolese painter asking that he paint and repaint each scene until it matched her vision and until she could patch the scenes together so that they flowed with the same grace as the silk of the skirt.
Description:
Explains the story and describes scenes on the dress "Esther"
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