Grief doesn’t always look like black clothes and quiet tears. Sometimes it wears red lipstick. Sometimes it cuts your favorite dress just above the knee. And sometimes, it slips gold earrings through your ears; not because you want to look good, but because it’s what your mother would’ve done.
For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, fashion is no longer just fabric and flair. It’s memory. It’s mourning. It’s healing. After losing both her parents in a year, she didn’t just write through the pain. She dressed through it.
“After my mother died, I was furious with the world. I wanted to scream. But instead, I asked my tailor to cut my favorite dresses short,” the author revealed in an interview with Elle. “I wasn’t thinking about looking good. I was grieving.”
And that grief showed up in her wardrobe like thunder in a summer sky, unexpected, jarring, unapologetic. Those tailored midi dresses, once symbols of elegance and poise, became acts of defiance. She didn’t care if they were unflattering. That wasn’t the point. “They were beautiful before,” she says, “but I needed them to show my grief. I needed them to be wrong.”
It didn’t stop with the dresses. Her mother’s signature gold jewelry began making its way into her daily life. The same gold she had once avoided became a lifeline. “My mother loved gold always. Earrings, necklaces, brooches. So now, I wear them too. I wear her.”
And then came the pink nail polish. “I never liked pink. But my mother did,” Chimamanda says. “Now I wear pink on my nails like a badge.” What once felt like vanity now feels like tribute. Each lacquered fingertip whispers stories of her mother’s joy, her laughter, her strength.
Photo: Getty Images/John Lamparski The writer’s grief for her father took a different form. “I started designing T-shirts with his name. With Igbo phrases. ‘Father’s Daughter.’ I still wear them.” In a world that rushes us to “move on,” Adichie made a conscious choice to carry her grief with her visibly, unapologetically, and stylishly. Her mourning didn’t have to be quiet. It could be bold. It could be printed. It could have pockets.
But this relationship between fashion and identity started long before the loss. “I was always interested in clothes,” she says. “I used to sketch dresses in my notebooks as a child. My mother would make us dress up properly, even to go out for ice cream.” The early seeds of style were sewn in a home that celebrated appearance not as vanity, but as dignity.
Photo: Getty Images/francoisdurand Even as a teenager in Nsukka, she played with silhouettes and details, requesting a sweetheart dress with pearls sewn only on the back. “I liked the idea of someone being surprised when I turned around.” Even then, she was storytelling with stitches.
But that self-expression hit pause when she moved to America. The cultural codes were different. There, intellect and style were framed as opposing forces. “I wanted to be taken seriously, so I started dressing down. Muted tones. Safe silhouettes. I became invisible on purpose.” But Chimamanda couldn’t stay hidden for long. Her voice, sharp, lyrical, unapologetically African, soon demanded an exterior that matched.
The turning point came with success. Her books won hearts, and her confidence returned. “I realized I didn’t have to choose between being taken seriously and dressing joyfully.” Her wardrobe erupted back into color and confidence. Ankara prints returned. Dramatic skirts and headwraps that turned heads. Her love for fashion was reborn, louder, freer, rooted in identity rather than approval.
Photo: Instagram/chimamanda_adichie And now, in this new season of Chimamanda Adichie’s life, fashion is everything. Not in the superficial, trend-hopping way, but in the deeply human way. In the way a daughter wears her mother’s earrings to feel held. In the way a writer prints her father’s name on her chest to stay close. In the way a woman reclaims joy after unimaginable sorrow.
Her Instagram burner account, yes, she has one, isn’t to stalk celebrities. It’s for shopping. “I browse in peace. I buy clothes under another name.” Fashion, for her, is still a private joy. Even as she graces the front rows of Dior and Roksanda shows, or lights up interviews in color-blocked brilliance, there’s something tender and intentional in every look.
“I like clothes that feel like me. That’s it,” she says. “I’m not trying to be fashionable. I’m trying to be myself.”
She isn’t launching a fashion line anytime soon, but she’s begun designing pieces with her tailor in Nigeria — capsule collections that speak to who she is now. And while she doesn’t care to market them publicly, the process matters. “Touching fabric, choosing colors, dreaming up silhouettes, it’s healing.”
She remembers the wide belts her mother loved, so wide they overwhelmed her petite frame. “I used to tease her. But now, when I see them, I smile. She wore what made her happy. And that’s what matters.”
Fashion, to Chimamanda Adichie, is not decoration. It’s a declaration. It’s remembrance. It’s healing. “Sometimes, I still wear those chopped-up dresses. Not because they’re beautiful. Because they remind me I survived.”
In a world that often demands that women be either deep or dazzling, smart or stylish, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is gloriously both. She looks beautiful in her red lipstick. Dazzling in gold hoops. A daughter who now wears pink nails and prints her father’s name on her chest. A woman dressing herself back to life, one look at a time.
Because fashion, for her, is personal. Like memory. Like music. Like love.
Photo: Instagram/Chimamanda_Adichie
