Magenta silks, bright yellow raffia, and delicately woven motifs graced Imane Ayissi’s runway in Paris, a true fashion feast blending African and European fabrics, styles, and cuts.
Cameroon-born Ayissi, the only designer from sub-Saharan Africa to ever take part in Paris’ haute couture shows, makes a point of featuring designs and fabrics from his home continent.
“It’s a great source of pride for me, for the whole of Africa,” he told RFI. His work uses Japanese cotton or Italian silk, along with Burkinabé faso dan fani, Ghanaian kente, or Cameroonian raffia.
He said he had to “fight” to make it onto the runways of Paris at his first haute couture show in 2020, after being knocked back several times. He is now fighting to see more high fashion manufactured on the continent, instead of having raw materials shipped to the West to be produced and sold at prices few Africans can afford. “As long as we’re not processing African materials on the continent, there’s going to be a problem,” he said.