Nigerian industrial design student Excellence Olujide has made history after being selected to create a piece now housed at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum in Virginia, United States, as part of the institution’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American independence.
Olujide, an Industrial Design major at James Madison University, said the opportunity came through her professor, Anna Marie Smith, who had a connection with the museum’s curator. She said she had casually mentioned an interest in exploring fashion within her industrial design studies during a class, and had not thought much of the comment at the time until her professor remembered it and recommended her for the project.
The finished garment, titled “(IN)-DEPENDENCE: Constructed Femininity and the American Ideal,” draws a parallel between the way femininity can be performed within socially constructed boundaries and the way freedom itself can exist within constructed boundaries. Olujide said the structured pleats of the top gradually dissolve into flowing fabric to suggest a movement from control toward apparent freedom, while a corset represents discipline and containment, and trousers reference utility and participation in labour, interrupted by a beaded cage. She said even the colours of the piece reinterpret the American flag, with Old Glory Blue rendered as a muted silver blue, white reimagined as ivory, and red deepened into garnet.
Olujide said seeing the finished piece installed in a museum after months of research, experimentation and construction was incredibly fulfilling, describing it as a proud moment for her both as a designer and as an international student.
Beyond the museum commission, Olujide said she works across fashion, accessories, product design, furniture, jewellery, 3D fabrication and visual storytelling, and hopes to build a practice where the disciplines inform one another. She called for greater investment in Nigeria’s fashion and design industries, describing them as a potential source of jobs and global cultural exports in the same way Nigerian music has gained international influence without losing its identity.
She encouraged other Nigerian women in fashion design to take their ideas seriously, research deeply, document their work, and resist diluting their identity in pursuit of international relevance, saying there was power in translating where one comes from into contemporary design.
