Why is it that those who take pleasure in clothes are not taken seriously enough at the workplace? The reason so many women suffer professionally?

It is difficult to say whether the problem is with the clothes, or with pleasure, or with the assumption that the mind and the body are in conflict, but here’s someone who has demolished the age-old barrier between fashion and intelligence, hitting hard with her words.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the writer of the celebrated Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, is a fashion icon as well. The winner of many literary awards, she has featured in Beyonce’s video ‘Flawless’ and was spotted in the front row at the Spring 2017 Dior show in Paris.

But that was not how she was when she had arrived in the US from Nigeria, her country, as a student. That was when she realised that around her, women who wanted to be taken seriously had to have “a studied indifference to appearance”. Pure frump would lead to good writing, dressing up wouldn’t.

Adichie went that way too: she gave up her heels, her colours, and her self. It is only recently that Adichie, now 40, is getting these things back. This, she feels, is perhaps because she has been published and taken seriously. It has given her the confidence, to be who she was. She only wears Nigerian now.

She no longer pretends not to care about clothes, because she does care, she had written in Elle. “I love embroidery and texture. I love lace and full skirts and cinched waists. I love black, and I love colour...”

In her Instagram account, Adichie posts photographs of herself in clothes made in Nigeria. She calls it ‘Project Wear Nigerian’.

There was always a connection between clever women and fashion. Otherwise how do you explain the word “Bluestocking”?