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SHETCHES :- Fine feathers
BY AIG IMOUKHUEDE
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
In the past couple of weeks, not having much else to do, I spent some
time in front of a television set watching two of Europe’s crown princes
getting married. One was Danish and the other Spanish, and they both
chose commoners as their brides, which seems to confirm my suspicion that
the whole of Europe has fewer princesses than Abuja has these days.
As I gazed at that assemblage of the rich and famous, what struck me —
and not for the first time — was that, when posh people dress to look
posh, they tend to overdo it. There they were, men of all shapes and
sizes, decked out in cutaway tail coats and top hats. Their ladies were
resplendent in dresses whose designs must have stretched the imagination
and ingenuity of Europe’s leading couturiers. But none of them, I also
noticed, was wearing that group uniform that we call aso ebi.
Uniqueness, rather than uniformity, seemed to be the norm.
We do the overdressing bit here in Nigeria too, I was thinking as I
stayed glued to the television set. I was thinking in particular of one of
my young friends in Lagos, and the problem he had with tail coats and
top hats. He had called at my house to deliver an invitation to his
wedding, which was just weeks away. I gave him a drink, made a feeble joke
about his imminent loss of what we call freedom, and then asked if his
preparations for the wedding were all under control. His answer was a
distraught “No.”
“What seems to be the problem?” I asked.
His surprise answer was: “A tail coat and a top hat. I spent all of
last week trying to find out which tailor in Lagos makes the best tail
coat, and which shop sells top hats.”
I stared at him, not quite sure that I had heard him right. “Tail coat
and top hat?” I asked.
“That’s what I will be wearing for the wedding.”
This, I told myself, must be one of those young men who set out to make
a bold statement with their wedding suits, and then end up merely
looking as if they had strayed into the church on their way from a costume
party. I refrained from telling him that, however. Instead I said: “You
seem to be planning for a really big wedding.”
“It’s not me. It’s my mother. She doesn’t want our family to be
outshone at the wedding by the other side.”
“And who,” I asked, “are the other side?”
“The bride’s family.”
“And the tail coat is your mother’s idea?”
He nodded. “She thinks it will impress the wedding guests, and look
terrific in the photographs.”
“I suppose you realise,” I pointed out, “that if things go well with
the marriage, which I hope they do, you are not likely ever again to have
another occasion to wear both the tail coat and the top hat?”
“I plan to give the suit away to any of my friends who plans to get
married.”
“Or you could rent it out and make some money,” I said, trying to be
helpful. After all, Moss Bros, the clothes rental people in London, must
have had a modest start.
My young friend shrugged. He obviously had more serious things to think
about. He said: “Do you know what a fuchsia is?”
“It is a kind of flower,” I told him.
“And the colour?”
“I have no idea,” I confessed. “Why do you want to know?”
“It’s one of the colours my mum has chosen for the aso ebi. The
invitation cards clearly state that the dress code for ladies is fuchsia and
pearl, and it is driving everybody crazy. Few of those invited know what
a fuchsia is.”
“Can’t the guests attend the wedding wearing what they like?” I asked.
“My mum needs the money,” the young man said.
I couldn’t see the connection, so I asked him to explain, which he did,
telling me the way it works. A wedding is arranged, the budget is
prepared, and the expected cost looks quite daunting. That is when the
bride’s mother (or bridegroom’s mother) constitutes herself into a
committee of ways and means, and come up with the brilliant idea of foisting an
aso ebi on her friends.
She appoints herself the sole distributor of the fabric, and slaps on
a handsome profit margin. That way the impressive society wedding is
partially subsidized by her friends.
“That’s very clever,” I nodded. “Is there anything else bothering you?”
“Yes, there’s the matter of the groom’s evening party. Because all the
expense of the engagement party and the wedding reception at the MUSON
Centre will be borne by the bride’s family, my mum is concerned that
people would think that our side is getting a free ride. So she is
insisting that our side should have an evening party.”
“With another aso ebi?” I asked.
“Yes, and this time the dress code for men will be butter lace jacquard
and emerald. The butter bit should not be a problem, but I just hope
everyone knows what is the colour of emerald.”
“Why doesn’t it just say green on the invitation card?” I asked.
“Green sounds too common,” he said. That was where I gave up.
But if tail coats and their accessories cause a prospective bridegroom
anguish, they are nothing when compared with the problem faced by
wedding guests when deciding what presents to give the newlyweds. In bygone
days, and among what may be referred to as the middle class, what the
new couple are given fall within the range of dinner and tea sets, bed
and or table linen, canteens of stainless steel cutlery and a book on
home making. The last named seldom gets read.
If the bride-to-be is suspected to be already “with child”, there will
always be a lynx-eyed well-wisher to give her a set of baby’s linen and
a gift-wrapped carry cot.
The filthy rich do it differently. Not very long ago I heard of a newly
married couple who walked away with a new S-Class Mercedes-Benz, the
down payment for a new house in Victoria Island Extension, plus cash to
pay for the furniture — all courtesy of the bride’s father.
Some years ago, no doubt as a result of my being mistaken for someone
else, I received an invitation to a wedding in far away London. The
bride’s parents both lived in Lagos, so moving the wedding to London was, I
suspected, an exercise in one-upmanship. No airline ticket was enclosed
with the invitation, so I had to assume that I was expected to find my
way to London and pay for my stay there.
What was enclosed with the invitation, however, was a small note,
tastefully printed on a pink gilt-edged card, instructing me to call at
Harrods in London any time before the eve of the wedding, where a
shopwalker would show me a display of some items pre-selected by the couple as
suitable wedding presents. Presumably I would then pick an item, pay for
it, and bring it along for presentation at the wedding reception. Very,
very upper class.
I must point out here that, up to that time (and to this day for that
matter) I had been inside Harrods only once, and for all of sixty
seconds when, being late for an appointment in the Knightsbridge area in
London I used a section of the shop’s ground floor as a convenient short
cut to gain access to an adjacent street. The entire time I spent in that
shop was not even long enough for me to form an impression of what it
looked like.
All right, the idea of flying to London to attend a wedding had its
fascination, but after I had checked my bank balance, and discussed ways
and means with my bank manager (on whom I made no impression whatsoever)
what I finally did was to cable my congratulations and good wishes to
the couple, with an explanation that unforeseen circumstances were
keeping me in Lagos. Except for that one instance nobody has since then
directed me to Harrods, or any other emporium in London, to pay for
pre-selected wedding presents, but that does not mean that the practice has
been discontinued.
Is there nothing to cheer wedding guests in all this? May be not in
London, but here in Nigeria there is, and it is called plastics.
Take a typical wedding. As the reception at last draws to its close,
columns of young women begin to march up and down the aisles,
distributing plastic bowls, plastic buckets, plastic trays, plastic key holders,
plastic bottle openers, plastic beakers, and hand-held fans made of
plastic. These plastic objects, suitably inscribed, are gifts from family
members, friends and various other groups, and they are intended to be
everlasting reminders of the wedding.
A plastic beaker has found its way into my bathroom cabinet. It
commemorates a wedding that took place on 20th September 1997, between two
people named Pembi and Dola. I remember Dola’s father very well. He it was
that invited me to his daughter’s wedding. But as for Dola and Pembi, I
now spend most mornings, as I brush my teeth, trying to remember what
they looked like. Ah, well.
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Originally Posted by Lafem
