Things Nigerian Women Have Said in a Fitting Room
Sept 1, 2026 · 5 min read · By the studio
Nobody tells you this when you open a shop, but a fitting room is not really a fitting room. It is somewhere between a confessional and a therapist's office, and you are the one holding the curtain. Women do not come in to buy clothes. They come in to find out something about themselves, and the dress is just the thing they use to ask.
So here is what they say.
"Just give me a small." Not a question. An instruction. She is holding a large in one hand and asking for the small, and what she needs is not the small. She needs one person today to not treat it as a big deal. So you bring the small, and you bring the large as well, and you say nothing about either.
"Won't you give me discount?" Before the zip is fully up. Before she has even seen the back.
"How much did you say again?" She heard. She is buying time while her brain does arithmetic and her heart does something else.
"I saw this same thing at another place for cheaper." Maybe she did. Maybe she saw something with the same colour, from far, in a different shop, six months ago.
"I have something like this at home." She does. It is coming home with her anyway.
"My stomach is too big for this." Her stomach is not big. But you have just become her therapist, and there is only one correct answer.
"I look so fat." She does not. She knows she does not. She needs to hear somebody else say it.
"This mirror is making me look slimmer." Said with suspicion, not joy. Nobody trusts good news in a fitting room.
"Let me see it outside." The room is too cramped. She cannot step back far enough to see the whole thing, so she is coming out to stand in the shop and turn round twice.
"Can you zip me?" Half inside a dress she may not buy, calling a stranger she met four minutes ago.
"Let me send it to my sister first." Ten minutes. Front, back, side, mirror selfie, one with the flash, one without. Then she comes out, hands you the pile, and buys nothing.
"I'll come back for it." She will not.
Here is the part that took us a while to understand.
Almost none of it is about the clothes. She is negotiating with the mirror, the room, her sister on WhatsApp, and something somebody said to her in 2019. The dress is barely involved.
Which is why we do not rush anyone. Take the room for as long as you need it. Try the small if you want to try the small. Come outside and see it properly. Ask us what we honestly think, and we will tell you honestly.
And if the answer is no, it is genuinely allowed to be a no. Nobody is counting.