Imane Ayissi Presents Its New Spring Summer 2022 Couture Collection: FOUFOULLOU

"Foufoullou" means both "mixed" and "together" in the Ewondo language of Cameroon. These words tell the essence of my work, this renewed joy of bringing cultures together - but also a dream of today. The last two years have tested us all. There, particularly in Cameroon, peoples are divided, elsewhere tensions are exacerbated. Everywhere in the world, exchanges and demands are becoming harder. Haute-Couture is a theatre stage where the air of the times can be questioned but also where the dreamed harmony can be celebrated.

This is why I have chosen, this season, to make two worlds collide: that of the "slogan" garment and that of the party. Borrowed from West African textile cultures, with their meaningful printed pagnes, as well as from the culture of the T-shirt with messages, here applied to Haute-Couture, the first proclaims loud and clear the need to come together. Faced with the great challenges of our time, those concerning the ecology or the current pandemic, it is urgent to unite to imagine, together, new ways of living and to define new common goods. Being together is also the desire to meet again, to dance together, after the successive confinements that have kept us apart, with the closure of places of culture and festivities or the restrictions linked to the pandemic that isolate us. Because fashion has neither customs nor borders, I have summoned the traditional festivals of Central and West Africa, the spirit of the masks, their raffia fibre costumes and their promising profiles to dance in Paris on the stage of a reinvented Palace. In this ceremonial to re-enchant our world, between ritual and parade, the sequins flirt with the kente of Ghana, the “bazins teint s” of Cameroon with electrically coloured silks, the acid green Calais lace with adire dyes from Nigeria.

This collection is a play between the generosity of the square cuts, inspired by the boubou, the fullness and volume associated with the presence and social status in Africa and the energy of the Western cut, the tailoring and the structured cuts that redesign the body. And as always, the work of African artisans (dyers from Nigeria, weavers from Ghana and Cameroon, raffia from Madagascar), the excellence of French and Italian suppliers with silks (taffeta, satin, satin-backed crepe, the authenticity of ecological materials (a fluid jersey made of bamboo) and the handmade work (embroidery or applied raffia, strand by strand) carried out in Imane Ayissi's atelier.

IMANE AYISSI