Akalann
“The pride of being different must not prevent the happiness of being together” Léopold Sédar Senghor
The starting point for this collection was my desire to revisit two totem garments worn on the African continent: the boubou worn by men and women in most West and Central African countries, and the Kaba, a loose dress originally imposed on African women by European colonizers in the 19th century to cover their bodies and shapes, and which has become a kind of national garment in Cameroon.
But as I worked on these garments, it became clear to me once again how they related in terms of construction to other emblematic garments from other continents: kimono-type garments from the Asian continent for the boubou, the Korean Hanbok or the dresses worn by women in China during the Tang period, not forgetting European dresses from the very late 18th and early 20th centuries. It’s these links, these relationships between elements of apparently extremely different cultures that fascinate me. So I thought of this collection as a journey through time between Asia, Africa and Paris. This journey also involves a collaboration with the painter Wang Ying, who is also a diplomat and paints Parisian landscapes with a technique that draws on both traditional Chinese painting and Impressionism. Wang Ying has produced prints on silk and on new ecological fabrics made from Bamboo, as well as paintings on fabric.
Imane Ayissi