The Beginning of POP IDENTITI

Some dreams arrive all at once. Others live quietly inside you for years, taking shape through memory, experience, heartbreak, faith, and everything you become along the way.

POP IDENTITI was like that for me.

Long before it became a brand, swimwear was already part of my life. As a little girl, I loved swimsuits so much that I would wear them around the house after school, ready to swim whether there was somewhere to swim or not. My siblings still remind me of it. There was something about water, summer, and the freedom of being in a swimsuit that always felt natural to me.

My mother’s hometown, Oguta Ameshi, in eastern Nigeria is surrounded by water. Growing up, we would return there for holidays, and somehow I learned to swim without ever remembering being formally taught. I simply joined everyone else in the water and kept going. That love never left me. Even now, summer, oceans, boats, movement, and travel are deeply connected to how I experience joy.

Fashion entered my life just as early.

I was always changing clothes to suit my imagination. I would take my big sisters’ old pieces and have them altered into something that fit me. Growing up in Lagos, there was a tailor we called Kofi who walked through the neighbourhood with his sewing machine. I befriended him and would regularly bring him clothes to transform—trousers into skirts, old pieces into shorts, anything I could rework into something new.

Without knowing it, I was already learning that clothes did not have to remain what they had originally been made to be.

Later, modelling became my first great love. It opened the door to the fashion world and gave me confidence, discipline, resilience, and a deep understanding of imagery, clothing, movement, casting, and the creative process.

Elite Model Look Nigeria, 2009 — my first runway and first public appearance in swimwear.

Modelling also taught me how to hear “no” without allowing it to define me. You can attend hundreds of castings and celebrate the few that become opportunities. In many ways, that experience built me.

But eventually, I wanted more.

I never completely stopped modelling. I simply stopped allowing my entire life to revolve around being selected.

There were too many parts of the process I could not control. A casting director, agency, photographer, designer, or client could decide whether I was given the opportunity to participate. One month could be busy, while several months after that could be completely uncertain.

I wanted stability, but more than that, I wanted authorship.

I wanted to create the concept, shape the story, choose the people, direct the imagery, and build something that belonged to me. I knew there was more inside me than what I could express only as a model.

I wanted to be much more than a model.

That realisation led me to fashion school, where I began to understand that fashion was so much more than what appeared in front of the camera.

I entered wanting to understand the business, but I quickly learned that I also needed to understand how a garment was made. Fashion school challenged me deeply, but it also revealed a strength in me that I did not know I had.

In the process, I fell more deeply in love with fashion than I ever had before.

I began to understand the work behind the glamour: the construction, development, production, research, storytelling, and countless decisions that bring a collection to life. It gave me a completely new respect for the industry and changed the direction of my life.

IFA Paris graduate celebration, Istanbul, 2021 — the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another.

 

The idea for POP IDENTITI had already started forming in my mind, even before I had fully written it down.

The name came after a long search.

POP is taken from my initials: Princess Ogulare Polo. It is deeply personal, but it also works as a word. It feels bold, memorable, expressive, and alive.

IDENTITI speaks to something much larger.

Identity has always mattered deeply to me. I left home relatively young, lived in different countries, and travelled widely through modelling. Wherever I went, people asked where I was from. Over time, I understood more clearly that when you move through the world, you carry your home, your history, your culture, and your sense of self with you.

Knowing who you are is the beginning of everything.

For me, identity is also spiritual. As my faith has grown, I have come to understand the importance of knowing who I am in God. That knowledge grounds everything else—how I live, how I create, and how I move through uncertainty.

I wanted the name to speak to something deeper than clothing. POP IDENTITI is rooted in the belief that what we wear can be an expression of who we are—our confidence, our history, our culture, and the many versions of ourselves we continue to become.

It was perfect.

I also wanted a name that would never restrict the brand. POP IDENTITI begins with women’s swimwear, but the vision has always extended beyond one category or gender. In time, I see men’s swimwear, caftans, resort wear, accessories, footwear, jewellery, hats, scarves, and everything connected to summer, travel, and warm-weather living.

The first collection, ODOBA, began at home.

ODOBA means Queen, and the collection was named in honour of my maternal grandmother, who was known as Odoba. She was the queen of Oguta, and one of the most remarkable women I have ever known.

She carried herself with grace, beauty, dignity, and strength. She was deeply Christian, devoted to God, and committed to her community. My grandfather, the king, represented the traditional life of the town, and she seemed to move beautifully between faith, culture, family, and royal responsibility.

As a child, I admired her deeply.

I also remember the beauty of returning to Oguta for festivals and family celebrations—the wrappers, the colours, the dressing, the music, the movement, the ceremonies, and the sense of occasion. Being part of the royal household meant experiencing those moments closely. Everything felt colourful, expressive, and alive.

When I began developing the ODOBA print, I knew that if POP IDENTITI would eventually tell stories from different cultures around the world, I first had to begin with my own.

Before I could speak about other places, I needed to honour the culture I was born into.

My brother, Dr Anthony Polo, is an artist, and working with him on the artwork made the process even more meaningful. During a trip to Oguta, we moved through the village with a camera, photographing details that carried the identity of the place: elements from the palace, the king’s chair, women moving through daily life, scenes of celebration, gestures, objects, motifs, and the colours that appeared repeatedly throughout the culture.

We returned to those images, sketched the details by hand, and gradually translated them into a painting. That painting eventually became the ODOBA print.

The original ODOBA print, created in collaboration with artist Dr Anthony Polo.

It was not created as decoration alone. It was built from memory, family, place, and lived experience.

That philosophy remains central to POP IDENTITI.

The names of the pieces will always remain close to my heart because they were one of the few parts of POP IDENTITI that my mother and I created together. I would describe how each design felt, and she would search our language for the name that carried the same spirit. We spoke of the moon, the sun, fire, wealth, and journeys, allowing each piece to reveal what it wanted to be called. Those names became more than titles. They became a small, permanent place where her voice continues to live within the brand.

I do not want to create swimwear that is only beautiful. I want each piece to carry something. A story. A place. A conversation. A cultural memory. A reason for someone to ask questions and leave knowing more than they did before.

I want POP IDENTITI not only to be seen, but to be learned.

When someone wears POP IDENTITI, I want her to feel confident, sensual, elegant, soft, powerful, grounded, adventurous, and proud of who she is. I want her to feel at ease in her body and bold enough to be noticed.

The ODOBA print is not minimal. It is colourful, expressive, and made to be seen. Every time I wear it, someone stops me. It begins conversations. People want to know what it means, where it comes from, and what the images represent.

That is exactly what I hoped it would do.

To me, POP IDENTITI is wearable art—the art of swimwear.

It is something you take with you to a destination. Something you wear on a boat, at a beach, by a pool, during a summer that becomes part of your memory. It is practical, but also meaningful. It travels with you and carries another place alongside you.

Building the brand has been one of the most demanding experiences of my life.

I have actively worked on POP IDENTITI since around 2022 or 2023. It has stretched me emotionally, financially, creatively, and spiritually. The brand has been built independently, and every stage—sampling, manufacturing, production, travel, development, photography, and building the website—has required something from me.

There have been moments when I cried deeply. Moments when I felt exhausted, afraid, and uncertain. There were periods when I stepped away from the vision and almost convinced myself that I had given up.

But somehow, I always returned.

I believe POP IDENTITI is a gift from God. The process of building it has drawn me closer to Him and strengthened my faith in ways I could never have predicted. I have watched doors open, met people who showed me kindness, and found help at moments when I truly needed it.

I have also discovered abilities in myself that I did not know I had.

Sometimes you do not realise how much you are capable of until you have no choice but to try.

POP IDENTITI has been fully self-funded, but it has never felt like a journey I was taking alone.

Jesus has been my rock through all of it.

When I imagine the future of POP IDENTITI, I do not only see products. I see a movement.

I imagine summers spent in beautiful destinations with the people who helped build the brand and the wider POP family. Somewhere between July and August, in an extraordinary resort, villa, island, or coastal town, we come together to celebrate.

There is music, colour, joy, art, friendship, conversation, and people from all parts of the world.

Diversity has always existed naturally within the brand because it already exists within my life. My friendships, travels, and campaigns include people from different countries, races, cultures, and backgrounds. I want POP IDENTITI to become something they can all have in common.

A world where people meet, learn from one another, create together, celebrate, and carry these stories into new places.

I see collaborations with artists from around the world. I see myself travelling, learning cultures, directing campaigns, making fashion films, casting extraordinary people, and working with photographers, designers, filmmakers, and storytellers.

I see swimwear growing into resort wear, accessories, footwear, jewellery, hats, scarves, men’s pieces, and everything connected to summer.

You think summer, you think POP IDENTITI.

You think travel, art, colour, culture, and discovery—you think POP IDENTITI.

And to the woman reading this with a dream but unsure on how to realise it , afraid, or uncertain: keep going.

Believe in what God has placed inside you. Believe that you are capable of carrying it. Seek Him, hold on to Him, and do not allow a difficult season to convince you that the vision is impossible.

It is one thing to create something, but it is another thing for the world to see and experience what you have created. You can do the work, learn, sacrifice, build, and prepare—but there are doors only God can open.

One verse I return to is:

“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.”

When the journey becomes difficult, I remember that. I remember that my responsibility is to keep seeking Him, keep believing, and keep doing the work in front of me.

Some dreams take longer because they are also shaping the person who must eventually carry them.

POP IDENTITI has taught me that faith is not only believing the vision will come to life.

It is continuing to build while you are still waiting to see it.