Pomp and colour as Kenya’s fashion icon Orie Rogo Manduli is laid to rest

Her final journey was like a Mount Street fashion parade, with women and men dressed to the nines in honor of a stoic woman whose style inspired songs and many a tale.

Her casket arrived at the funeral service in a gleaming red Range Rover Limousine, a testimony that the woman who lay there, enjoyed the finer things in life. 

Led by Ministry of Defence Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa, the mourners described the late style icon as business woman of repute, a heroine of her time and a farmer whose fame travelled far and wide. 

“We are today marking the end of a chapter in our history, we are bidding bye to a woman of style, a woman of great ambition, and a woman of great courage,” CS Wamalwa told mourners. 

President Uhuru, whose condolence message was read by the Rift Valley Regional Commander, praised the late as a trendsetter for African fashion, praising her passion for vitenge headgear in particular.

The Head of State said  she will be missed in the fashion circles. 

Her family, led by her children Elizabeth, Janice and Katyana promised to follow in the footsteps of their mum, saying her death has left a huge gap in their lives.

Her daughter Janice Rogo brought the mourners to laughter, recounting an incident in which the late dropped her head gear at the JKIA after an altercation with a foreign journalist. 

“We had broken protocol by going to the arrivals section and as we were waiting for my elder sister engineer Elizabeth Rogo to embark from the plane from the USA a white journalist took our photo and hell broke loose with my mother making all drama until her headgear fell over,” Janice said.

And when all was said and done, Manduli was finally laid to rest at her Tondorie Estate, clad  in her usual spectacular head gear and afro-inspired dress. 

Manduli died on September 8 at her Nairobi home aged 73.

According to her personal Assistant Samuel Ndambuki, Manduli collapsed and died when she was preparing to go for a dental checkup.

Manduli had been admitted at the Nairobi Hospital in July this year with kidney complications and was discharged a month later.