Olajumoke Orisaguna, the lady whose grass to grace story shook the internet last year celebrated her one year anniversary of stardom at an exclusive event hosted by NETng in Lagos. The former bread seller attended the event with her husband, Sunday Orisaguna.
Olajumoke Orisaguna gifts 40 bread hawkers
Olajumoke Orisaguna needs no introduction, she’s the lady whose grass to grace story shook the world. Few weeks ago, she reportedly doled out cash, N5,000 to 40 bread hawkers at the Liberty Bakery where she used to work.
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In an interview with Encomium Magazine, he mother of two who just recently moved into her luxury apartment at Surulere said she’s enjoying her new home.
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“My morning routine is to pray, cook, clean, wake up the children, then have them all eat together as a family.” She added.
Opinion: Enough with the charade, Olajumoke is not a model, neither is she super | By: Samira Bello
So i found this article on theotherstyle.com and thought to share.
Do I have to introduce Olajumoke Orisaguna to anyone?
Should I even have to?
After all, she’s been on CNN, The Huffington Post, BBC and Buzzfeed. The proverbial story of the bread seller whose time it is to ‘shine’ and what not. It was fun at first, then it started to get somewhat ridiculous and now, its an outright farce.
Weeks ago, The Lagos Polo club had it’s annual event and part of this year’s line up, a fashion show was organized with several emerging and high profile designers showing clothes from their latest collections and there, this happened.
At the open call casting for the 2015 Lagos Fashion and Design Week, nearly 500 hundred models, a vast majority of whom had been in the industry for at least two years showed up to audition for one of the 75 slots open to models. Less than 20 percent got a slot. That is just a base idea of how competitive runway modelling is.
Of all the kinds of modeling there is out there ( and there are many), runway modeling is the most competitive, second only to advertising editorials in prestige and pay out. But to succeed as a runway model, you must either be well above average height or have a distinctive walk, the latter traditional models train for years to finesse and perfect.
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With the right kind of training, Olajumoke Orisaguna can grow to become a decent runway model, but she will always be at a disadvantage to other models. In that way, modelling is like basketball, genetics are just as important as talent.
Right now, she isn’t even a passable runway model but the narrative that she is is being forced on us. Motivations aside, putting Orisaguna on a runway before she is trained enough to compete favourably for jobs with her peers is doing her- and us- a disservice.
Orisaguna is a beautiful woman, but she doesn’t have that thing that sets models apart from other beautiful women. There is no ‘edge’ to her, and she isn’t aware of her body the way a model is. In her editorial with Layo G, (a heavily photoshopped project,) one could see how easily overwhelmed the former bread seller was when she is shot by someone who isn’t used to shooting amateurs. She is rigid, and glares at the camera in an awkward pose, strange for an editorial supposedly aimed towards working class women wanting to exude ease and confidence.
In this cut-throat industry of ours, once the media circus around Orisaguna and her good fortune dies out (perhaps, the beginning of which started when the Ese Oruru story broke) she will barely be visible among the swarm of 5’11 models she is supposed to compete for jobs with, let alone become a coveted face.
Many might argue that her popularity is supposedly getting her jobs, but in high fashion, popularity is detrimental to a model. A model is supposed to be secondary to the clothes he/she is selling at all times, and in the absence of training or experience or a face that is marketable to the discerning fashion crowd, what else does she have to hold on to other than her popularity?
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It took Moyinoluwa Arowoshola, winner of the 2012 Elite Model Look four years to land an international modelling contract, and Ninioma Anosike two years to open her first runway season at NYFW and both women are stunning and mavens at modelling with walks that will always leave an audience spell bound. So what are the odds for dear Olajumoke as a high fashion model?
There are other kinds of modelling; print and catalog, brand endorsements (like her endorsements with Payporte and Shirley’s confectionery) and even fashion adjacent jobs like hair styling (which she already has some experience in). She can still thrive in the fashion industry without being a high fashion model.
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I have seen many suggest that she takes as many endorsements and jobs as she can and stock pile what ever money she can lay her hands on before her ‘grace’ expires. When the realities of her odds are discussed, the concerned folks are dismissed as ‘haters.’ This mentality of opportunism is why the fashion and modelling industries are mere scaffolds hiding a rotten, ineffectual system.
Until this changes, all we will do is perpetuate a system that finds and milks (not so) talent only to discard them when they run out of potential opportunities for exploitation.
Article culled from here
Photos: Jumoke Orisaguna is balling.
Jumoke Orisaguna is still living large! The beautiful mother of two who has a few number of endorsement deals in her vault looks absolutely beautiful in these promo shoot for Shirleys Confectionery. To those who are not familiar with her story, Jumoke was just an ordinary girl before fate and chance decided otherwise few months ago. And during that period, she has rubbed shoulders with the high and mighty and stepped her foot in places she (probably) dreamt of. Her life is a testament to the fact that when God decides to treat your case file, he will thrust you beyind barriers of the past into the extraordinary life he designed for you. And what ordinarily should have taken years if not decades to establish, God can do in a split second.
"I dropped out of school so my siblings could continue their education." Excerpts from Olajumoke Orisagunna's PUNCH interview
Her story has permeated the nooks and crannies of Nigeria and even made international media headlines. It has evoked compassion, opened doors in least expected places, ushered her into realms of glory and brought her fame. Most of us have been itching to know her struggles before she attained the ‘celebrity’ status. Well, the beautiful mother of two has opened up in an interview with PUNCH newspaper. Read excerpts below.
Olajumoke’s pulsating story of dropping out of school so her younger siblings could continue their education, to hawking bread in Lagos in 2011, to starting her own hairdressing salon which later failed, to sleeping in the bakery in Lagos with her daughter and about 40 other women, to waking up at 5am everyday to pray.
Flashing a warm grin as she exchanged pleasantries with guest after guest as they made their way into the modest hotel in Yaba, an ever bubbling suburb in the heart of Nigeria’s commercial powerhouse – Lagos – last Wednesday evening, her bright complexion and lanky frame still stood her out even from the slightly dark corner where she and her 16-month-old daughter, Precious, were seated. Donning a black tank top, a pair of fitted denim jeans on top of a black plimsoll sneaker to match, you would be forgiven if you thought her smashing looks that evening was always the norm.
But shockingly, it has not always been this good for 27-year-old Jumoke Orisaguna. About one week earlier, she was hawking freshly-baked bread across the streets of Sabo, Yaba and environs in almost tattered dresses and worn-out slippers. Every day since she made the long journey from her native Ire, an agrarian community in Osun State, to Lagos with her little daughter in January 2016 in search of a new life, she had worked at least nine hours a day, many times under the ferocious and scotching afternoon sun that sweeps across the city, to earn a decent living.
The second child in a family of four children born to a poor farmer and a mother who sold vegetables to provide extra income barely enough to sustain the home, Jumoke knew the meaning of hardship even as a little girl. The loss of her elder brother, the first child of the family, meant that she had to provide direction for her three remaining siblings and also play a significant role in helping to bring food to the table. While many her age savoured the experiences of early puberty, Jumoke, by virtue of her humble background, had to grow up fast – and into an adult, too. For her, there was almost no childhood.
“While the other girls would run around to play in the stream and engage in all sorts of games, I was either selling vegetables for my mother or helping my father on his farm because it was from these two areas that our daily bread came,” the young mother of two recalls with nostalgia during a rare encounter with our correspondent earlier in the week. “The opportunity for running around like the other girls wasn’t just there,” she added.
With two wives and four children to feed, it became increasingly tough for the poor farmer to support the education of his children. As a result, Jumoke had to drop out of school after completing her primary education. Even though she knew if she must realise her childhood dream of becoming a renowned lawyer in the future she had to study further, the love for her younger siblings meant she had to sign up to a hairdressing training for them to also have a chance of becoming something big through education.
“I had to choose between me continuing my education and my other siblings sitting back at home,” the 27-year-old revealed. “It was a huge sacrifice I had to make for them to also have a chance of becoming great in life through education. I always feel sad each time I see my childhood friends who are educated and have become successful professionals today. If I had someone to sponsor me, of course I wouldn’t have ended up as a hairdresser or even ever had to hawk bread. I still nurse the pains till this moment.
“But instead of idling away at home or just selling vegetables for my mother and helping my father on his farm, I decided to learn hairdressing and make a meaning out of my life,” she said.
And for the next three years, Jumoke horned her skills in one of the best hairdressing salons in the community, hoping to hit it big by the time she would become her own boss. By 2013 she had successfully completed the rigorous training and had rented and equipped a shop with the help of family members and the little amount she had managed to save during her first stint in Lagos hawking bread in 2011 for six months. But every hope of instant success soon fizzled into frustration and utmost disappointment. The reality on ground was a distant contrast to the result she had long envisaged.
“Things became tougher after I opened the salon,” she cuts in. “You know since Ire is a town whose economic activities largely depend on the presence of the students of the Federal Polytechnic in the community, sales get very bad when they are not on campus.
“So, money wasn’t coming at such and even to feed or send our eldest daughter to school became a big problem for me and my husband. That was why I decided to come back to Lagos to give bread hawking a trial again in January this year. I felt it was the best option for now rather than just sit and idle away in Ire,” she said.
Luckily for the young woman, that decision has today turned out to be the wisest step she ever took. On the evening of February 2 while hawking her bread as usual, she crashed into something big – something that would change her life forever and write her name in gold. Celebrity photographer – TY Bello – was conducting a street shoot for Nigerian-born British singer, Tinie Tempah, on one of the streets dotting Yaba that evening when suddenly, from nowhere, Jumoke, with the heavy ‘baggage’ on her head, harmlessly sauntered into the scene. For her, it was another evening to service her many clients in the area especially at a nearby mechanic workshop where a handful of customers were already waiting for her.
“I only wanted to walk through the scene to take bread to my customers at the mechanic workshop around the place the shoot was taking place. I never had the intention of appearing in the photograph. It was while I made my way that the camera captured me,” she revealed.
Bread seller turned model, Olajumoke Orisaguna stuns in new photos, bags modelling deal
Jumoke is balling! Agege bread hawker turned model, Olajumoke Orisaguna has bagged a modeling deal with a Nigerian based top modeling agency; Few Models Management. She had a photoshoot under the agency and was styled by designer, Kunbi Oyelese of AprilbyKunbi. The mother of 2 has also agreed to internship attachment with Saris Signature and Make Me Hair Salon.
