Going Asia! V-Gorgeous

By Oyindamola Lawal
WITH long smashing braids, Omowunmi Oluwaseyi Osiyemi stepped into her friend’s office in a white shirt and pants. The lady is the brain behind V-Gorgeous.She seems to stand out in the crowd in her Asian designs.
According to her, “ if you look at the Asians, you will get some kind of sassy feeling. It gives you that really lady look. If you wear their sari for example, you cannot just sit down anyhow, even if you are a tomboy. It is not a gown, it is not a dress, it is not a jeans, it is not a normal Yoruba iro ati buba; the wrapper is done in a way that it gives you some pleats in the front that waves. It gives you that really fantastic and gorgeous look. I just feel it is the best to wear to red carpet because it puts you in a class of its own.”
She adds, “there is nobody that will see you in a sari without appreciating your elegance. Some people say they can’t wear it, but I do tell them that by the time you wear it and you step out on a red carpet, people will definitely ask you where you get your outfit from.”
Of course, designing a foreign cloth in Nigeria may not be an easy task, but how has V-gorgeous being handling the challenges. She discloses, “well, the challenge actually comes form the manufacturing because it’s difficult getting a very good labour to do the sequence here, in Nigeria as its done there. Once. I choose my material and make a design, I sent them to India; so, an order takes two weeks be ready and sometimes, there maybe some delays; these are the challenges. I am even thinking of bringing them to Nigeria, so, we could make as much as we want within a time frame.”
Before going into designing, event planning and hall decoration, the Olabisi Onabanjo University accounting graduate had worked in oil and gas, and also a telecom outfit. But found out that her interest was on her passion.
Speaking on how she ventured into event planning, Osiyemi says, “in 2005, Mobil Nigeria sent me to the US on training, and as the programme was extended for sometime and I said to myself, I can’t just sit down in America, so, I picked up a course in Event Planning.”
How has she been able to manage her careers? She answers, “ to me, they are interwoven, because what makes the event is the fashion and the people. If they say okay I am having an event and nobody comes or people dress anyhow, it doesn’t give event that classic look. I am doing my event planning on one side and my fashion on the other, so, what I do is to dress people up to go for the event I plan.”
Osiyemi says she gets inspiration from her clients. “I normally ask them how they want to look in a coming event and what they would wear? Their responses motivates me to give them what they want and I am happy and fulfilled for it.”
V-gorgeous source her fabrics from all over the world, including Asia, India, London, Nigeria to mention a few