By all accounts, fashion brand Slashed by Tia is kind of a big deal. Run by 22-year-old Nigeria-born, London-raised, and New York-based designer, Teni Adeola, (aka Tia), it has been sported by some of our favorite it-girls, including Gigi Hadid, Kali Uchis, and Dua Lipa.
“She’s ready to be one of the greatest female couture designers in the world,” Teen Vogue crowned Tia, which sounds quite remarkable, judging by the fact she launched her brand from her dorm room during the summer of 2017.
Inspired by art and with a passion for the Renaissance period, she’s also driven by a healthy dose of competitiveness “Honestly, what inspires me is just impressing my parents, you know, my parents are African, so they’re not really into the whole fashion thing,” she told NBGA. “But obviously, they’ve definitely seen growth and it’s exciting when I can tell them things that have happened that they actually know about, or like working with platforms they’re familiar with, that’s always really exciting and it pushes me to do even better.”
Talking with NBGA about her artistic background, she recalled that while growing up in Nigeria she used to make clothes for her dolls from traditional fabrics her mother had. “And yeah, it’s something I’ve always been interested in and kind of done,” she says. “It’s not something I woke up one day and was like ‘I’m going to make clothes now.’ But I’ve always been really into clothes.”
