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👋 Good morning. The rain came out of nowhere today, here in Lagos, anyway. Where are you reading from, and is it raining there? The internet never slows down, and as always, there's something for everyone. But if you'd like to see something different next week, let us know. We'll make it happen, promise. Let’s get into it ⬇️ |
In this edition: We reimagined the met with Nigerian designers, a discussion about why the internet is obsessed with wedding content, this week in pop culture, and more. |
If you’re enjoying this, don’t forget to subscribe and join The Juice community. We’re building this together ♡. |
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Shalom Tewobola,
Editor.
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Quick Question |
What’s the first Nigerian film to screen on Netflix? |
Answer at the bottom of this newsletter |
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🗞️ THIS WEEK IN POP CULTURE |
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🎵 MUSIC |
The reviews on Asake’s M$ney are split. Some people miss the hustling Organize Asake, while others find this version enthralling. Pitchfork gave it a 5.6/10, but thankfully, we’ve broken our colonial chains and are listening to our own. We think Asake has evolved, and when you've made it the way he has, of course, the sound gets reshaped. |
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💼 BUSINESS |
The founder of Moniepoint thought it was a great idea to go on stage and say young Nigerians are unemployable and only want to commit fraud. Hiring is hard, but the truth is, employers want to hire ₦150k-earning personnel to perform the work of a ₦1 million-earning expert. We need to be more honest. |
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📚 LITERATURE |
Romance avengers, assemble! Tomilola Coco Adeyemo announced her third book titled Efun’s Jazz. It follows Nicole, who confronts love, loss, destiny, and the truth about her unhappy marriage at the Osun-Osogbo Festival. It blends Yoruba spirituality with romance, and we are excited to read it! |
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📽️ FILM |
AMVCA week is already in full swing. We are looking forward to the outfits from the cultural night and the award ceremony. We are also keeping our eyes out for the wins. Check out our predictions here. |
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↝ TRENDING |
Techpoint Africa’s recent investigation, published yesterday, has exposed weaknesses in the vendor onboarding processes of food delivery platforms Glovo and Chowdeck in Nigeria. The journalists impersonated a Lagos restaurant and got approved in a few weeks. We are worried about who’s actually in charge of Nigeria’s food ecosystem. |
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MAIN SQUEEZE |
7 Nigerian designers we are recruiting for the Met Gala |
For the fashion world, the first Monday in May is the biggest and most significant day of the year. It’s the day set aside for the Met Gala, the annual charity event that benefits the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Met, in New York City. |
The theme for this year was “Costume Art", which explores fashion as an embodied art form, and the dress code was “Fashion is Art". |
Still soaking in the outfits from the Met Gala, we asked a few fashion enthusiasts to pick Nigerian designers to dress them for the gala under this theme. What we ended up with is a list of designers who could go toe-to-toe with designers on the global stage. |
Hertunba – Chinazam Ikechi-Uko |
I would choose Hertunba, because a problem with the sentence “fashion is art” is that many interpreted it as “fashion as art,” so most designers referenced artworks. But this negates fashion’s very foundation as art itself and makes it more of a medium. I don’t want that; I want a designer who is intertwined with their designs, that believes every aspect of their garments are works of art. |
Hertunba does that. The brand’s signature is the use of Akwete fabric, a textile native to Abia state, strictly woven by Igbo women. |
Florence Agu, the creative director of Hertunba, understands that this is an art, as well as a craft, in itself. So everything woven is simply an extension of this art form. |
Weiz Dhurm Franklyn, Bridal Accent & Melira – Wumi Tuase-Fosudo |
Their pieces are literally art. |
Two growing brands that would have also been perfect are Bridal Accent and Melira. I'm also big on comfort, and I think these three think outside the box without it being inconvenient or uncomfortable |
Lisa Folawiyo – Eki Ogunbor |
I truly admire how she interprets fashion; I love how her mind works. Over the years, she’s effortlessly created wearable art inspired by the most simple things: bicycles, fruits, football, etc. |
I’d love to see how she translates this year’s theme in her language of culture, print, colour, and embellishment. |
Sevon Dejana & Weiz Dhurm – Franklyn Chioma Mmeje |
Sevon Dejana, because his pieces have this perfect mix of structure and intricate detail. They feel artsy but still very refined and wearable. |
And Weiz Dhurm Franklyn for the drama. His designs are super sculptural, like actual wearable art. The kind of pieces that make a statement the moment you step on the carpet. |
Veekee James – Rhoda Ebun |
My choice of designer would be Veekee James. The brand has constantly proved that they combine artistic impressions with couture and craftsmanship. |
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🔪 THE PEEL |
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Why are we obsessed with wedding content? |
Every weekend, a new wedding takes over the timeline, and we all get the clips, the outfit reveals, the hashtags #NeverGettingMarried, #LoveisEazi. |
We even know the designers and the décor and are labelled “online in-laws” without ever sharing the same space with the couple. |
While this might seem simple, maybe normal, it signals a change; weddings are no longer private milestones but mass media events. |
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Peeling it back |
Political Baby, a video essayist and social theorist who is focused on African social and pop culture, coined the term “Bellanaija Industrial Complex” to explain this shift. BellaNaija has spent years amplifying weddings online. But the key idea is that it’s not just BellaNaija itself; it’s the entire ecosystem that has formed around it. |
Think planners, photographers, designers, makeup artists, influencers, and even guests, all creating with the expectation that their work might be featured and hopefully go viral. |
Over time, this created a kind of feedback loop: a visually stunning wedding gets featured, that feature sets a new standard for what a “good” wedding looks like, future couples and vendors design their weddings to meet (or beat) that standard, those weddings get featured again, and the cycle continues. |
What makes it an industrial complex? |
The scale and coordination. Weddings are no longer just organised for the couple and their families; they’re produced for visibility. |
There’s an unspoken template now: pre-wedding shoots, coordinated bridal trains, cinematic entrances, drone footage, and perfectly lit décor. Even the timeline of events is shaped by what performs well online. |
So instead of weddings being spontaneous or purely cultural expressions, they’ve become highly structured, media-ready productions designed with platforms in mind from the start. |
And once a wedding goes viral, everyone is scampering to replicate it. So, we can see gorillas' costumes at multiple weddings, bottle girls, and the same lighting because we are chasing that click. |
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Another layer |
Weddings have always been a million-dollar industry, but in a love-crazed algorithm, this has taken a bigger turn. |
Weddings carry the one element that the digital world craves: virality. And weddings trend because they combine romance (a big industry with dating apps and entertainment industries backing it), fashion, wealth display, and spectacle. |
The algorithm rewards visual excess like décor and outfits, and it favours emotional payoff, in this case, a love story. Hence, weddings are the perfect places to digitally launch a product, be it you or an object. |
Take, for instance, Fisayo Longe’s wedding; it was a marketing ground for her label, Kai. |
It was used to launch the new line, Never Getting Married, which doubled as her wedding hashtag. The wedding had a pop-up booth and a runway where guests strutted in their own recreations of the Never Getting Married collection. |
Then there is what I like to call the guest economy. There is a new trend in the digital zeitgeist: “Here’s how much I spent to attend this wedding." The guests attend as creators, not friends or family of the couple, but creators. |
So, we get the quote for their wedding outfits because, as I said, weddings are a ground for wealth display. We also get their GRWM videos, travel vlogs, and whatnot. Weddings create secondary content ecosystems beyond the couple. |
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The core |
In the contentification of weddings, intimacy is lost. |
Weddings become less about personal meaning and more about outdoing the last viral moment. |
The pressure to stage spectacle financially and socially keeps rising, leaving behind a simple, unsettling question: Who are weddings really for? |
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🎵 PRESSED BY THE JUICE |
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Wanna guess the mood we are in today? Think, who runs the world? girl power. Yes, we are spinning our Woman Commando playlist for you this weekend. We have Simi, Lubiana, Lady Donli, and many more for you. So press play! |
Don’t forget to save, we update frequently. |
Interested in guest curating? Reply to our mail, thejuice@pulse.ng |
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THIS WEEK’S POLL |
What's the first Nigerian film to screen on Netflix? |
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FRESH STATS |
6 in 10 In 2018, 4 in 10 Nigerians were poor. Today, 6 in 10 are. |
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Today’s email was brought to you by Shalom Tewobola and Praise Okeoghene Vandeh. Editing by: Shalom Tewobola. Designs by: Daniel Banjoko |
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