Dressing sense

May I quickly say this before I am accused of rudeness: The man hiding behind the Ram is back. I do not intend to be mistaken for Candido, “the man behind the mask,’’ that compelling column in the New Nigerian of old, at the time Adamu Ciroma, Manma Daura, Turi Mohammed and Dan Agbese held sway in Kaduna. But like Candido the Ram Column will be informed, factual and blunt. It will be more. As is its custom, the column will be deep and will strive to be new in thinking.

Years back when the column had a short break, Allah-De, now of blessed memory, sent word round to help look for the Ram fearing if the worst had happened, more so that the break coincided with Eid-Il-Fitri Festival. When the column returned, it asked for permission to borrow Allah-De’s own robe when after a couple of years off the radar, he returned in his inimitable way, “As I was saying…’’ If I may recall, Remi Ilori, the erstwhile editor of Morning Post, led us all in celebratory dancing and rejoicing. That was way back 1972. So, I will like to return quoting Allah-De: “As I was saying…’’

If there is any area of our lives about which those of us in the free world can say we have lost it is unarguably the way we dress. When we speak of the free world the picture that comes to mind is the Western, developed world. In this contemplation Nigeria is being included because freedom has taken a firm and irrevocable root, of course as in all things, with vigilance. In several ways we look up to the developed world for the good and for that which is bad. We emulate them. As the saying goes, it is the racing horse in front that the horse at the back takes a cue from.

So is it that the fashion world, it would appear, is getting indistinguishably one, theirs and ours, in character and tone. The difference is in our traditional attire. As for the English dress, that world is already one. In catwalk and all, our fashion world is indistinguishably one – in nudity and near nudity. In unabashed over-sexualisation of our lives! Young and old, mothers and daughters, aunties and sisters, everyone wants to outshine the other. There are no boundary lines any longer, nor can we talk about most people feeling any qualms in our present age. In consequence, the fashion world is at the highest height of its creativity. And the market is booming in tow. At fashion shows, all manner of designs are on display. The weirder a dress is the louder the applause and the higher the commercial success of the enterprise.

That is not even the point.

I have just read a report announcing a New Dress Code for BA female crew. To perhaps a few who may be uninitiated in this age of recession, BA means British Airways. A gentleman who goes by the name Matt Smith from the crew’s union called Unite, commenting with glee said: “Not only is the choice to wear trousers a victory for equality, it is also a victory for common sense and testament to the organising campaign of our members.’’

The campaign, I was to gather, lasted two long and almost unending years. Mr. Smith continued, “Female cabin crew no longer have to shiver in the cold, wet and snow of wintery climates, but also can be afforded the production of trousers at destinations where there is a risk of malaria or Zika virus. The change goes a long way in providing for the comfort and self expression of its crew members, but it’s also important for safety.’’

With the new dress code in place after the two-year pressure, the union said 83 per cent of its members – male and female – believed the change “needed to happen.’’ The lady reporter who filed the report on the development: “It may seem an odd conversation in 2016.’’ In other words, the change in dress code is something that ought to have been regarded as given several years back. She is right. It must surprise anybody that issue of trousers for women is still a subject of debate in this day and age. Is there anywhere, any direction one turns that one will not see women in trousers, whether in Europe, in China, America, Canada, Nigeria or Ghana. In social gatherings, at seminars, workshops, conferences, name it, women are in trousers. At airports it is given especially at flight arrival time. Were anyone to recoil and wrinkle his face at this plague ravaging everywhere he would be laughed to scorn.

Were the British Airways, Her Majesty’s airline, not a conservative organisation, the now old dress code would have been thrown out of the window a long time ago. Until now, the British Airways female crew did not have the option of putting on uniform pants, instead they were required to wear skirts.

The reasons advanced for pressing for the new dress code is sound – to fight cold and prevent an attack of malaria arising from mosquito bite in regions strange to the crew. Sound on the surface. The unstated reason is undoubtedly to join the vogue. The British Airways, an offshoot of British Caledonia, has always had female crew members, and cold is not anything new. Also, the airline has always had its ways of protecting them from malaria. Mosquito bite is not prevented by the wearing of trousers. Anopheles mosquitoes have no defined territories for attack. They can go for the arms, neck, back of the hand or even forehead. It would have made more sense if the union had said the dress code is meant to protect my boss of old would have rendered in good prose as “the fine, fine legs of the hostesses’’ from the prying eyes of passengers. There are a lot more, and indeed daring spectacles on the ground to fill the eyes.

Look at the vogue. The neckline of a woman’s dress is no longer low it has in a majority of trending wears disappeared, leaving the alluring and sensitive part, front and back to little imagination. The more generous the boobs are the greater the readiness to flaunt them. The more cute, the more vivacious the ladies are, the more they want to display the curves, the legs and the butt and all.

The celebrities are dictating the pace. The fashion designers are meeting the never ceasing stream of orders. The fashion devotees are unrelenting. Reality TV star Kim Kardashian threw away all inhibitions when she was expecting her second child. A mother and a wife, Kim posed nude to show how sweetly endowed she even was in pregnancy, a blessed status she was supposed to hold sacred. Bayonce, the singer, now also expecting her second child whom the MailOnline has revealed would be twins, just a couple of weeks ago, threw away her clothes, too. See the applause: Time Magazine included Kim Kardashian on its compilation of 2015 100 most influential people and the Vogue described her as “a pop culture phenomenon’’. Her Instagram boasts of 95.2million followers. And Bayonce Facebook, 64.5.The environment is now gripped in a world of nudity and the sing-song is the beauty of the nude. Long dresses beyond the knee are anachronistic, meant for the unenlightened, the non-members of the progressive club. Since our forebears emerged from the Cave Age, we men have never had it so good.

It cannot come as any wonder when those feeling suffocated by the incredible tidal wave of present-day are justifiably driven to want to have something done about the rot. The Punch is running a campaign page for a rethink, captioned Fashion Patrol. The Sun has run a similar fashion court, a curbing and reformatory page for a long time. In some universities, such as University of Lagos, there are dress codes for decency and dignified carriage. Yet, the devotees are defiant. There is what is called leggings; there is spaghetti; there is body hug; there is see-through. The men are not lagging behind in the craze. We seem to be actively reinventing Sodom and Gomorrah, forgetting her ruins.