Texts, talks and tailoring: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fashion politics

This paper traces the rise of author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to international prominence as a literary celebrity and public intellectual by assessing the significance of fashion as a transmedia phenomenon in her writing and public discourse. While much has been made in the media about the significance of hair in her third novel Americanah (2013), I suggest that the politics of fashion have been central to the construction of all Adichie’s fictional writing, and in the development of her public image. These interests were foregrounded in the writer’s acclaimed TED Talk “We Should All Be Feminists”, which has since been published as a book. During the talk she remarks, “I have chosen to no longer be apologetic for my femininity […] I am happily girly. I like high heels and trying on lipsticks” (39-40). I argue that Adichie deploys such references to fashion and dress in order to negotiate tensions between the different cultural contexts traversed by her feminist politics, and her construction as both an internationally acclaimed novelist and style-conscious Nigerian. By weaving her celebrity out of different forms of fashion, Adichie has both asserted a distinctive identity and helped her politics to reach diverse cultural spaces.