Gettin' Bridgy With It

We know her as Bridgy, but her full name is Bridget Ogbeiwi Hynes. Raised in Benin City in Nigeria, she has called Ireland home for the past seven years and cuts quite a dash with her blend of Irish, international and West African clothing styles – not to mention her trademark bangles!

“I love bangles, and people now nearly expect me to wear lots of them whenever they meet me,” she explains. On her recently-released debut album, her eclectic approach to dress is reflected in the way she mixes indigenous African sounds with contemporary pop rhythms. “I like to wear clothes that are colourful and happy, just like me,” she confidently asserts.
Having learned that the weather in Ireland is quite different from West Africa (it doesn’t take long!) she has had to come to the conclusion that so many of the clothes she’d be happy wearing there simply do not suit our climate. “What I try to do now is to get the materials in Africa or here and make clothes myself to suit the Irish climate. It can be very cold in Ireland, so clothes that I’d wear no problem in Africa need some adjustment! I like to put a lot of thought and care into how I look and what I wear, but clothes have to make you feel good too, so they are very important to me for lots of reasons.”
When Bridgy is in search of suitable material in Ireland she admits that Hickeys in Dublin’s Henry Street is a regular haunt for her, and she also drops by Topshop when she needs some jeans.
When the singer is not making her own clothes, she quite fancies Tommy Hilfiger products. Price is not too important to her. “I obviously keep an eye on the price of things, but I can generally afford to buy whatever items I want,” she explains. Nor does she go much for shopping on her own. “I tend to know what I want to wear,” she says, “but it’s always good to get a friend’s opinion. So when I go shopping, I might like what I see in the mirror, but if my friend doesn’t like it I’ll ask her why – and take it from there.” Bridgy is also blessed with some friends who do her shopping for her! “Some of my friends shop for me in Canada and that’s how I got some of the exotic tops I have in my wardrobe,” she tells me.
Apart from her near-addiction to bangles, she also favours scarves over caps or hats. “You can do some interesting things if you match a scarf to some of your other clothes. It can make me look different and feel happy, so why not?”
Although Bridgy sometimes slops around her own place with jeans and sweater, she prefers to dress up a little, even when she’s alone. “I’ll often get up in the morning and have a shower and then slip on some nice clothes. Just because there’s nobody around it doesn’t mean you can’t help yourself feel good and nice clothes help.”
Bridgy even dressed up in the studio when making her new album. “Some days I wore three-quarter length dresses with no backs. They make me feel really funky and real sexy,” she says. I haven’t met anyone who disagrees with her on that score.

Wa Do Ghe is out on LB Records. Bridgy plays The Village, Dublin on November 24.