Know more about Nigerian Attire

I would like you to know some of the materials used for the cloth used to make Nigerian clothing like 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.

Yoruba attires would be my case study, but in other tribes they have different names. I will try to describe the different pieces of clothing, and there are pictures to illustrate them.

For women, there are the following pieces of clothing with pictures:

• 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 or head gear. 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.

• 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 different styles(gown).

For men, there are the following pieces of clothing with:

• 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.