White Side Button Top and Cobalt Palazzo

I built this for a Director who chairs three boards and refuses to wear suits. She finds them ageing. She is not wrong. There is a way the corporate suit ages a woman in Lagos that we do not talk about enough; it can flatten a personality into a role even when she walks into the room with a full one.

The white top has six small buttons set asymmetrically down the side, a quiet structural detail that holds the eye at her waist instead of at her chest, which is the part of the silhouette most women want directed when they chair a table of men. The cobalt palazzo is pleated, generous, and falls from the natural waist with weight. The trousers move when she does, which matters when she stands up to walk to the projector at the front of the room.

She walked into a quarterly board the week after pickup, and her chair started the meeting with: you look like the future. He meant it as a compliment. She took it as a brief. She has reordered the trouser in deep teal.