What informed your choice of Olajumoke, the bread seller as the face of this year’s St. Eve African Fashion Week?

We chose Olajumoke because of her street to stardom story. Remember that she is known as the bread seller. As we all know she is a representation of the street and all that it embodies. And also a lot of top designers/models come from the street. In line with this we created the theme, ‘Fashion on the Street’.

So who else portrays this better than her and we felt that since Olajumoke came from the street to stardom, she fits prominently into our theme and as the pioneer of someone who went from grass to grace, she will help those who have lost hope to believe in themselves that they can also make it and become stars despite their challenges.

So, Olajumoke is the face for this year’s edition of St. Eve African Fashion Week, which intends to tell the Nigeria story on one hand and the Africa story on the other hand – that Africa has the potential to develop. She gives the young people hope that they too can make it in their lives’ endeavours.

That’s why we came up with this new niche in fashion industry to make the young people know that they can be whatever they want to be if they believe in God and themselves. So we ask them to register en masse to be part of this iconic event and be crowned as a star. In God we trust to make it happen for them.

What are your expectations?

We want to let the world know that St. Eve African Fashion Week is at it again. This is the fourth edition and we are bigger and better this year. We are making it more interesting and more interactive this year.

We want to create young entrepreneurs in the fashion industry, most especially, to give opportunity and platforms to those people that cannot have their voices heard in fashion and creativity, for them to be able to show the world what they have and also to begin to build big brands in the Nigerian fashion industry.

You would agree with me that the Nigerian fashion industry is becoming very interesting.  We are trying to tell the whole world that St. Eve is making it bigger and we are creating something new in the fashion industry now and so let the youths come out and participate, have the opportunity to grow their own talents.

So this year we are making it more interactive. All you need to do is to get a registration form online with #5000 and you would be auditioned and if you are good with your creativity, we would give you and others who are also good, equal opportunity without being bias. Nobody is picking anybody to come and become a super star. Now we are having a project fame kind of project in fashion and we are doing it in five categories: photography, modelling, makeup artistry, hairstyling and fashion designing.

The event is going to last for three days. On the first day, there would be opportunities for different speakers who would come and talk about entrepreneurship, hair styling, photography and other things.  The second day would be when we would pick the winners and the third day would have awards and also fashion show by established designers.