Shanty Town: How Shaffy Bello Embodied Her Role With Tiannah’s High Fashion Pieces

Tiannah styling is known for her extravagant yet regal designs – one look at Shaffy Bello as she rocked her affluent styles to embody the role of Dame Dabota in the new Netflix thriller series Shanty Town and you would know Toyin Lawani-Adebayo designed her outfits.

From the eccentricities of the designs to how they exude and depict power, Tiannah did shake things up with high fashion-pieces to give Bello the perfect styling for the role of Dame Dabota, the Lagos State Governor.

We have seen the fashion designer cloth some of the most iconic and powerful female characters in Nollywood, including Eniola Salami (Sola Sobowale) in Kemi Adetiba’s King of Boys.

With just two weeks to prepare over 40 outfits, Toyin Lawani-Adebayo had told Netng that the inspiration for her styling on King of Boys was from an artistic point of view of the character.

“Eniola Salami. Powerful, classy, and tough,” She told Netng in August 2021.

Dame Dabota’s character is no different from Eniola Salami, as Dabota was daring, classy, and powerful. She needed her outfits and the overall styling, down to the jewelleries, to represent her affluence and power and bring the character to life.

Dame Dabota appeared in two scenes in the film, and they were particularly pivotal points in the film’s storyline, and she embodied the role clothes truly represented them.

Shaffy Bello, for her first scene, wore a peacock-inspired painted and crafted blazer. The double-breasted suit set in blue from Tiannah Styling was splashed with multicoloured paints and had extra materials swirled around the suit’s left arm.

The outfit was paired with a black camisole and accessorised with layered pearl chains, with a huge green stud at the centre of the necklace. She also wore a bracelet with the same design.

For the second outfit, worn at the fight scene between Chief Fernandez’s thugs and Dame Dabota’s thugs, she wore a black bubu dress paired with a black cape embellished with gold designs. She paired the dress with gold accessories.

Although her acting was one of the most outstanding parts of the film, the outfit designs and styling are elements that took her character to another level. The outfits simply matched up with her character’s charisma and affluence – a feat owed to the uniqueness and daring nature of Toyin Lawani’s designs.