Imane Ayissi Presents His New Haute Couture Fall Winter 2023-24 Collection: Mguilguidigueu-Mteun

The starting point for this collection was the discovery of works by the painter Paul Chmaroff in the Thierry Schneider collection, which contains several hundred of his works.

I knew absolutely nothing about this painter, who comes from a culture (Russian) far from my own culture and difficult for me to classify in a known artistic movement, but yet I was immediately able to appreciate the beauty of this painting. From this, the reflection on the fact that the search for beauty spans cultural differences, that it is, on the contrary, what binds all members of humanity, and that everywhere in the world, the starting point of a graphic work is always a set of lines and curves, a line and a circle (Mguilguidigueu-Mteun in the Ewondo language of Cameroon) and any creator can recognise themselves in the work of another creator Echoing the work of Paul Chmaroff, this collection is above all a pure search for lines, shapes, volumes, movements, colors and textures. But no aesthetic research today can do without questioning its environmental impact, which is both a constraint, a limitation on creativity, and at the same time an incentive to be more creative with these constraints. Hence the decision to use mainly natural fibers in this collection, including linen, undoubtedly the most ecological fiber, in combination with silk, or bamboo viscose, which has a low ecological impact and is biodegradable, and embroideries made from fabric scraps. As always, I also used fibres and textiles that are characteristic of the African continent: raffia, Obom (tapped tree bark), “bazin teinté”, Kenté...

IMANE AYISSI