Mai Atafo will not stop until he is Africa’s leading designer brand

ILet’s talk about the brand Atafo. It went from Mai Atafo Inspired to Mai Atafo. Now, Atafo, describe this "journey." t was inspired by my love of clothes. Just things about me really liking to wear clothes and always looking good. And almost like every Nigerian fashion story, you wear things that people like, and they ask you where you got them from. You tell them you made them, and the next thing you know, you're making them for everyone. That's pretty much what it was. It wasn't what I dreamt of doing when I was a little child, or like I had an epiphany one night and the clouds came down; no, it wasn't as sexy as that.

Speaking of childhood, what did you think you would be as an adult?

Mai Atafo, a disruptor of conventional fashion shows, has set his sights on presenting his new collections to his customers with his standalone show, which he launched in 2022, seating 400 invitees front row. He has come a long way, building ATAFO from Mai Atafo Inspired to Mai Atafo. This charismatic sartorial fashion designer who aspired to be a musician started off in marketing, but his passion for fashion won out, and he decided to give it a shot. Years and years later, after showing impressive collections, putting on a show to remember, constantly improving and expanding, and creating constantly sold-out signature pieces, Mai Atafo will not stop until he is THE designer brand out of Africa.

I thought I would be a musician. I wanted to be a musician. That's all I wanted to do growing up. I love music, and it is still my first love.

After leaving the UK and working through the ranks, notably at British American Tobacco and Guinness Nigeria (leaving as a senior brand manager), why did you choose fashion design? How did you go from core brand/ creative marketing to a Savile Row Academytrained fashion designer? Why did you make the move?

I was already doing fashion while working at Diageo; I had started my fashion line and had been doing it for three years before I left. I decided to go into it full-time because I figured if I didn't do it now, I wouldn't have the opportunity to do it later. I did it because my fashion brand was already happening while I was working at Diageo doing brand marketing, and I discovered that I was thinking about it because if I got a promotion at Diageo, I wouldn't be able to focus on my brand anymore, so it was at this point that I had to make a decision before my career progressed one step further and I wouldn't be able to do this, and I didn't want to live a life of regret, saying, "What would I have been if I had tried this?" So I took the plunge to just go and try out fashion, so as I was trying it out, I gave myself a year to try it out, and if it worked great, I would go back and look for a job, so that was exactly why I decided to leave and try fashion out full time.

And how has that been so far?

It's been quite fulfilling and also very challenging—not as easy as I thought. Moreover, I didn't go there with any thoughts; I didn't go there to start this business; I just went there to start fashion, so I didn't have all my I’s dotted and my t’s crossed, even till now I do not. I had no idea what I was getting into. Nobody ever tells you that this is a business; it’s not about how you like things to be, how you like to put colours together, or that kind of fairytale stuff that people talk about; it's a lot more than that, and I didn't know all that, so the struggle has always been, "Now that you know it, how do you make it work?" and I've been trying to make it work to the best of my knowledge since then, and that's where the Savile Row training came in. He was a traveling lecturer, and I asked him if he could come to Nigeria, and he said if I paid him he would come, so I brought him in here to train for two weeks, and we did that twice: once, I think, in 2014, and the second time was in 2015.

You are arguably one of the most desired bridal designers around. How did you get here? How and why did you delve into bridal fashion?

I think the whole thing with bridal is something I grew into, to be honest, and it came from a strategic standpoint. We had reviewed where we were generating revenue for the business, and things came from things that had to do with weddings, so either you're making the suit for the wedding or making the bride fitting, you know, and we started doing this thing as tailors where we would make bridesmaids dresses. It's quite interesting that I didn’t even start fashion by making suits; suits came in as I proceeded with it, so we did something and we checked back, and we realized that most of our revenue and costs were coming from people that had anything to do with weddings. So when we looked at it properly, we were doing bridal, bridal dress, groom, and some bridal dress at the time, and we were like, "Why not just make this your thing and let people know that you do it?" Because the only way people know you do something is to tell them, so I told them that I was doing it, and the best way to do it is to do it properly, so that's why we said, "Let's do bridal; let's have a formal event for religious grooms." We had an event at the incubator; Uti and Muna were the headliners of the launch, and we did it, and at that point in time, if you ask me how my dressmaking skills were, I'll probably tell you 20 out of 100 at that time when we started. As they say, do not let perfection slow down progress, so we didn't have to wait to be perfect; we just had to juggle, so literally, we just started like that, and here we are today. What inspires your creativity? How do you get back-to-back inspiration to create collection after collection?

Anything inspires my creativity. I don’t think it's one thing or the other; I don't think it's my life travels and experiences and stuff; everything that I do has a core, which is sartorial craftsmanship like tailoring. That's what the core of everything that I do is at the end of the day, so you would always see a suit in my collection somehow. The world around me inspires me—what I see, what I watch, my travels, everything around me.

Let's talk about the raved-about "Tradxedo." What’s the inspiration behind this unique piece from Atafo?

To be honest, we started it for men's wear, and we did that in 2017. It was a long time ago, and it came from the idea when we started doing traditional outfits, kaftans as we call them now, or trad as we call it more. We started doing that, but I felt like trad was very flat; it felt like you were doing tailoring from Obalende. The trad was inspired by a typical traditional outfit that we wear and a tuxedo shirt. That's why it's called a trad-xedo," because it's a traditional outfit and a tuxedo shirt. If you notice there are beads on it and the front is like a shirt because it unbuttons all the way down, then we took the idea of a traditional outfit, which is pretty much the length, and the way we tailor our traditional outfits, and traditional outfits are shirts; they are just elaborate shirts; kaftans are elaborate shirts; so we did that, so we started trying to do that. The first ones we did were textured bibs, just like you have the tuxedo ones; they are called the masala shirts. So we did something that was inspired by the masala tuxedo shirt, and as we moved on, we changed it to a velvet bib, so they had a textured fabric on the velvet bib. Then we moved on to having the bib beaded, and once the bib was beaded, we looked at it and thought, "Wow! "Girls will like this, and moreover, most of the things we do are androgynous," so we got a big satin one, we made it a bit more oversized with a bit of edge, wider pants, and we beaded the bib, and it was like a totally different thing! We actually have some stylish men preferring the female one to the ones we made for them, so that was where the whole thing with the tradxedo came from.

The truth about it, like you said, cuts across everything: you can be casual, you can be dressed up to be serious, you can wear your shorts and wear the top like a jacket. It has many lives, pretty much, and these are the kinds of things we like to do to make it feel like we have actually created a signature for the house. So a tradxedo is definitely a signature for the house, and that's how we came about it. It's definitely one of our best sellers.

You’re quite the showman when presenting your collections; what inspires your unique runway presentations?

I think you do fashion, and when it's time to make it a fashion show, you should not neglect the part that says "show." That's what people forget. When you say something is showbusiness, that means it's a show that's going to give you money; it's a fashion show; it's fashion now make it a show; and it's not unique to me; around the world you have designers doing things like that, like Karl Lagerfeld doing the supermarket or the Louis Vuitton one that was at a train station and people come around the train station; someone has done an airport before; someone has done a whole beach; it's a fashion show; there was water, there was sand, everything. So people do that, and I think it helps tell the story of what you're trying to do, and that's what I've tried to do with the limitations you have of platforms, but I also try to tell that story because I feel like even if you forget the clothes, you don't forget the show, and when you remember the show, there's a possibility that you remember one or two of the pieces, so it's like it's something to just keep you hooked on the whole story you're telling, which is the fashion show story. Coming up with those ideas, sometimes they're very organic; it's like when people always say, "Oh my God, you did that," it was a two-minute thought and execution. It was like, "Let's do this and call somebody and call the other person, and it's done." Get a choir. I saw this choir at the Basketmouth show, and I was like, "Oh, I could use these guys in my fashion show." I got their name, called their manager, and said, "I want them to come to my fashion show." "I want them to perform at this segment." One time I thought it would be great to have a violin at the fashion show, which is to make your own music called "What the Strings." I like live music during the show I think it just helps that energy, in my own fashion show we did basically the same thing we got a live drummer to perform, even the music that we did was original music by ‘Bigfoot’ for the show and it was quite good, so I always feel there should be an element of excitement because fashion shows could be boring and the way we do it in Nigeria where you sit down and watch maybe 10 designers in one day you get fashion fatigue if something doesn't bring you up then you don't appreciate the clothes anymore so for me not to get the chance where you don't appreciate my garments anymore let me give you a show and it's my turn so you remember my show and my garments.

What goes on behind the scenes at Atafo? Describe a typical busy day for Mai. I don't think there's a routine, but I know you try to come in early every day just to get work done. The most important thing to me is customer satisfaction, so I always try to check on them to see what's going on with the customer's work, what the status is, and other kinds of stuff. If the customer walks in, even though it is not my job to see them or do any consultation, sometimes I just like to go and sit in on the consultation just to add a little bit more value. By the time you sit through four consultations and fittings, your day is already over. I also manage the ordering of stock for garment production, so that's it for me with the vendors, both local and international. I deal with that to a large extent. In my free time, I'm just trying to make sure every other part of the business gels together. I think that's the part that people forget: you're not doing it in fashion; you're doing admin; the cars are running; the inverter is on standby; the place looks presentable at every point in time; if anything is wrong, try to get it fixed; you know, all those things can be quite annoying, but they are things that you must do, and you do those things on a daily basis; but everything is just geared towards getting great customer satisfaction and making sure that the customers are happy, so to speak. That's pretty much how I do things like designing every now and then. When I'm focusing on a fashion show, that's when I actually get settled down. Let's create stuff, but I'm always creating. When it's something I like, I either sketch it down, write it down, stick it down, or screen grab it and move on with it.

How does Mai Atafo unwind? How do you unplug from all these busy, luxe lifestyles? What would you be caught doing in your downtime?

I don't think that time exists, which is quite sad. I don't know what “me time” for me looks like. I think as part of my life, I would go back home and watch TV shows I like to watch, but it's not necessarily me vacating and living. Vacation hasn't happened in a long time...

So your travel is just work?

It’s pretty much work; we find time to see family and friends while we are out to eat and try to enjoy a good meal somewhere or catch up with someone somewhere, but it's never really like, "I'm on vacation; let me put my feet up and watch the skies for 10 days." It hasn’t happened in a long time. I think the closest I had to doing that was when I went to Canada sometime last year, but it wasn’t a vacation more than anything. I think I rested, so I look forward to resting. Maybe that's my me time, when I can sleep beyond 6 hours. I'm always very happy that I can sleep a bit longer. When I can take walks, whether I'm in a shopping district and I'm walking around and looking through different shops and just getting inspiration, I enjoy that a lot, but that is also not my me time because that is low-key work. I don't know what my time is, but I enjoy my past time. I enjoyed watching TV. I am now into interior design, so I like to watch interior design shows and home makeover shows. I absolutely love them, and I would say my office is my first because I redesign it every year.

Why am I not surprised?

I redesign my office every year; then I moved in October, and I redesigned the house that I moved to. I pretty much rearranged the whole structure design from the bottom to the top, made the whole ground floor my kitchen, which is against the living room to the kitchen, the living room to the first floor, squeezed in a den somewhere, and made the living room open plan with a lot of air. I redesigned it, and people come and look at it and go, "Oh my God, this is amazing," so interior design makes me very happy, and music makes me very happy too. I have a vinyl collection and a turntable, so sometimes after work I just relax in my studio, play my vinyl, and just enjoy that moment. It last for 30 minutes, but I enjoy it, so I think I just steal time within the madness to do that rather than take out the whole period. I want to do it, but I don't think it will work for me. Thankfully, we try to manage with family around that time, so I think my daughter is just happy to see me when she sees me, but we have our own groove. She has a phone that only has my number and her mom's number, so she video calls me any time of the day, and I must answer because she doesn't get that I'm busy and I can't answer her, so I think we have worked family around that, but I don't think I have that time to relax. I have a PS5 that I have not unboxed; I've not had the time. I also have a TV, just to remove it from the box and play FIFA. I bought it when it was FIFA 23, now it's FIFA 24. I've not had that time to play, but I'm not complaining because I love what I do and I'm really enjoying it. Yeah, I could do something else for money, but in terms of what I'm doing, that's keeping me fulfilled, and what I'm doing right now is doing that.

You started your solo show last year, and that was something. It was different. Why did you start? What inspired that?

Sometimes we say things like, "If you went to Tom Ford, would you behave like this?" If you went to Gucci, would you behave like this? They don't respect us as Nigerian designers, but the truth is that we do not do what those guys do, in all honesty, so first things first, part of telling your brand story is doing your own shows and doing it the way you want to do it without compromise. The reason why many designers do not do their own standalone shows is because they can't afford it. It's a lot of money; you're spending N30 million easily, and that doesn't even cover everything, but it gives you the avenue to do what you want to do. No one tells you who should model for you; no one tells you how long your show can be or how short it should be; no one tells you how many pieces you should showcase; no one tells you how to present your garments on the runway; it's all left to you, and when you have that full control, it means you are telling your own brand story. Most of all, you get to invite people that matter to the brand to the show. You're not assigned tickets for your own show. So moving from where I get 25 tickets for people to come and watch my show to where I have 400 people sitting front row at a show just makes a whole lot of difference, and for many of those guys, my show was the first time they were coming to a fashion show in their lives, so my customers never even had the opportunity to actually experience the brand to that level, so that's what triggered the show. We're trying to give the full experience to our customers and friends of the brand. So the starting point is that it's a big venture, but we're going to do it again this year, and we're going to do it bigger because the sad part of it is that last year we got a venue and we thought it was big, but once we were set, we realized that it was actually very small. It didn't let us do what we wanted to do, and it was a bit of a struggle. So this year we want to start with the things that mean the most to us and get a very big venue that will contain the people that we want to contain comfortably. That will be a tradition at the Atafo shows until we can't accommodate it anymore because everybody is important. There are also some people who will want to attend the show but will not have access. You want them to also attend the show even if they can't afford the garments now, but they should just come and enjoy the show. So that's what we're trying to do again, and you know, by God's grace, God being on our side, he's always on our side, we will do it, and we will set the standard in the industry.

What’s next for the Atafo brand?

I don't think it's a particular milestone we're trying to achieve next, but there's a journey, and it's trying to be THE designer brand out of Africa. So when people are calling the Pradas and the Guccis, they will call Atafo. I think that's the ultimate goal at the end of the day, and that's a journey; that's the next step. The reason someone wants to buy a Birkin bag from Hermes for millions of Naira is because they've sold something to them, so I want that to be the case for Atafo, where we do something and people want to buy. When you buy a designer bag, you're proud of it; it's almost a boastful thing, and that's what I want it to be for Atafo. So it's a journey; it's not there. We've started it quite well, but it's not there yet. We still have to justify it to some people, but we want to leave the case open, so we do not have to justify it. That's the ultimate goal.