A “gele” is an ornamental head covering made of woven cloth commonly worn by women in Nigeria and other African communities across the diaspora. Although geles can be worn for daily activities, elaborately styled geles are usually reserved for special functions and ceremonies—namely weddings, church activities, and other formal events.
The fabric of choice for a gele is aso-oke—a stiff, textured, and tightly hand-woven fabric. Aso-oke literally translates to “top cloth” and was traditionally a sign of wealth and favored by Nigerian kings. Aso-oke fabric can be unwieldy for most women to style and place on their heads themselves. As a result, women usually rely on experts to manually style geles by hand onto the heads of their seated clients. The process can be long, inconvenient, and wasteful as hand-styled geles can usually be worn only once.