Fashion blog star Haguma on Ugandan style

At 26, most women are gambling with what exactly to do in life, but Gloria Haguma seems set as a fashion blogger, writer, and social media manager.

Haguna who works with designers, cloths store owners, stylists, makeup artistes, hair stylists, models, fashionistas, and investors in the line of fashion,  last year won the East African Fashion Journalist of the Year award at Swahili Fashion Week Awards 2016 in Tanzania. She had been nominated the previous three years. She was also awarded with the ‘Best fashion Blogger’ award at the Abryanz fashion and Style Awards 2014 in Kampala.

“It’s simply an affirmation that anything is possible as long as you put your mind to it,” she says of the awards.

Haguna’s presence in Uganda’s fashion world has a funny beginning. While at Uganda Christian University (UCU) Mukono where she pursued a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, Haguma and a colleague made a habit of critiquing how fellow students dressed. For everyone who had something ‘going wrong’, Haguma always had an opinion about how they could be made better. She was also a good reader of fashion blogs, magazines, and write-ups which informed her analysis.

When she secured an internship at the Daily Monitor newspaper in Kampala, she chose to specialise writing in fashion for a section called ‘Sqoop’. She has never stopped.

She says she dallied to go into blogging because it requires what she calls “legit work” yet she always eyed a personal style blog. Since she made the foray, however, it has created numerous opportunities for her; including being a social media content creator first for Abryanz and now Beryl Couture.

Haguma attributes her go-getter attitude to her father, Ezra Hagum Imana, who despite losing his job ensured Haguma and her six siblings did not lack for much.

“My father was an amazing father though extremely strict and taught us that there is time for everything,” says Haguma, “It is not surprising that up to this time, it has stuck in me not to loiter around doing nothing.”

Haguma was born in Kisoro district although the family spent the better part in Kampala and until recently Mukono. She attended St. Steven Primary School, Seeta High, and Mpoma Girls. She graduated from UCU in 2014.

Haguma says Uganda’s fashion industry is more developed today than 10 years ago; it is more demanding to set up an event, more Ugandans appreciate and can afford styling up, and Ugandan models are going places – including the first ever Uganda male model being signed to an agency in South Africa.

“You can actually get a red carpet event in Uganda and scale it to those in Nigeria and South Africa. Makeup artistes are also a big deal now,” Haguna says.