Dakar Fashion Week | Senegal, Africa

Dakar, capital of style (Le Point)

This Saturday, Dec 3, 2022, on the island of Gorée, the elegant women of Dakar are adorned with their finest finery. Lamé dresses, mordoré organza boubous, jackets in bazin and recycled plastic, colored moussors (head scarves) and cowrie necklaces: fashion is celebrating. Adama Paris, who founded it, is celebrating the 20th anniversary of Dakar Fashion Week. As she has always done, she has invited the greats of African fashion (Studio One Eighty Nine from Ghana, Awa Méité from Mali or Orange Culture from Nigeria among twenty other labels) that she parades alongside sure Senegalese values. and young talents to whom it wants to give a chance. Adama dug a furrow and energized a sector.

Creative excitement
In Dakar, several names have imposed themselves in recent years, between futuristic designer fashion, hybrid aesthetics, more “mainstream” labels and the quirky revival of the boubou. Among them, Selly Raby Kane, who draws from seemingly contradictory repertoires (science fiction, the recycled culture of the Baye Falls* and wax, for example) to create a daring wardrobe that willingly mixes and recycles materials and techniques, creating an avant-garde silhouette that challenges the retinas. The preppy Dakaroises prefer BAAX, the label of Sophie Zinga Sy which celebrates with talent the Senegalese woven loincloth, precious and timeless. The younger generation idolizes Tongoro, founded by Sarah Diouf, since Beyoncé wore one of her dresses with geometric patterns, which characterize the brand – today now distributed on Net-à-Porter. Every day a little more, the elites and the middle classes in Senegal favor Made in Senegal (Mwami, Bulldoff, SoFatoo, Niofar by Milcos, Rama Diaw or Johanna Bramble…). In the homeland of Senghor and Cheikh Anta Diop (and of the famous university of the same name), there is an assumed pride, which has nothing to do with arrogance, but with the joy of being oneself.