"My mission is to teach how diverse African cultures are": the Haute Couture debut of Cameroonian designer Imane Ayissi

"My mission is to teach how diverse African cultures are": the Haute Couture debut of Cameroonian designer Imane Ayissi

ALTA COSTURA
Uno de los predilectos de Zendaya y Angela Basset para la alfombra roja, Imane Ayissi se está labrando un nombre con su versión compleja y contemporánea de la alta costura. Ahora que se suma al calendario de Haute Couture como diseñador invitado —el tercer africano en conseguirlo—, aprovechamos para acercarnos a su estudio de París para hablar con él de cómo está redefiniendo la moda

Por Alice Pfeiffer“Mi misión es enseñar lo diversas que son las culturas africanas”: el debut en Alta Costura del diseñador camerunés Imane Ayissi “Mi misión es enseñar lo diversas que son las culturas africanas”: el debut en Alta Costura del diseñador camerunés Imane Ayissi

The Cameroonian designer and based in Paris Imane Ayissi was very early in the fashion world;As a child he used to cut his mother's dresses, Julienne Honorine Eyega Ayissi - the first Miss Cameroon after the country's independence in 1960 - to understand how they were made.She always recognizes that it was she who woke her love for fashion and today remains her muse: "It is so elegant ... and not only for how you saw, but for her bearing, emanates strength and grace".

Ayissi founded his own brand - which bears his name - in 2004 after settle.Although at first he only made garments for private clients, since then, he has presented his creations in international fashion weeks such as Lagos, Dakar and Shanghai.He also has showrooms in New York and Paris, and his prêt-à-porter cocktail dresses, made with Faso Dan Fani (the national fabric fabric of Burkina Faso) can be found in Alára, a large boutique that is often described as theLagos response to the iconic Parisine Colette.

When we visit Ayissi in his studio, in the Parisian neighborhood of Strasbourg Saint-Denis-which is increasingly fashionable-we are surrounded by their creations and sculptures of their native country.These days are pure emotion for the 51 -year -old designer.January 23 has presented its spring-summer collection 2020, for the first time as a guest at the Official Haute Couture calendar.It is the third African designer who achieves it, after Alphadi (Nigeria) in 2004 and Noureddine Amir (Morocco) in 2018.“I have worked a lot to get here.It seems that the third is the defeated!It has been a very exciting moment, ”she says about the strict standards of the fédération of the Haute Couture et de la Mode (FHCM).Both Saint Laurent and the former president of the FHCM Didier Gumbach supported his candidacy and campaigned to accept his profile as part of this year's calendar.

“Mi misión es enseñar lo diversas que son las culturas africanas”: el debut en Alta Costura del diseñador camerunés Imane Ayissi

Ayissi is working a name with its complex, modern and sophisticated version of Africa."Africa is not a single country, it is a continent! We deserve much more than that mountain of simplistic topics, they make me sad," he explains.“My mission is to teach how diverse African cultures are.In Cameroon, for example, we have more than 200 dialects.There is a very deep complexity and that is just what I would like to celebrate ”.In the red carpet, by the hand of Zendaya, Angela Bassett and Aïssa Maïga, we have seen their garments, which take a twist to the most traditional fabrics - although it treats them with a savoir faire typical of haute couture and an aestheticsfluid and minimalist—.Ghana Kente (hand -woven fabric with geometric patterns), Madagascar raffia on the shores of Caftan style dresses;obom (fabric made with the bark of the trees) turned into floral ornaments;Jackie Kennedy jackets of Bògòlanfini (a Mali fabric dyed with fermented mud) and Ndop (a resistant tissue dyed with Indigo, Cameroon).

The different stories are interwoven in each fabric that we see in Ayissi's designs, some have a scathing ingenuity.Take a blazer in ‘Tie-Dye’ made with a technique nicknamed “my husband cannot allow it”-a symbol of wealth, which the designer uses with a smile—.In a more altruistic plane, many of the fabrics come from their collaboration with cooperatives such as XOOMBA (in Burkina Faso), specialized in organic organic cotton of ethical production.As director of Ayissi's study, Marc Chave explains it like this: "Imane is not far from someone like Dries Van Noten, who used baroque fabrics, but with a minimalist approach".

Inspired by Grace Jones, Yves Saint Laurent muse;The Guinean model and activist Katoucha Niane, and the French actress Fanny Ardant, with which she acted in the 2002 assembly of Fedra of Antoine Bourseiller, Ayissi fascinates how the body interacts with the garment and how the dress changes according to the physicist ofWho takes it."The way in which each body, whether thinner or more voluptuous, gives a different interpretation and another life to each design is something that seems magic," he says."I want to dress women of all races, identities and origins, while contributing to represent Africa with a new look".

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By María JoséPérez Méndez

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