Imane Ayissi Spring/Summer 2025 at Paris Fashion Week Couture

Imane Ayissi Spring/Summer 2025 / SS25 at Paris Fashion Week Couture entitled AKALANN

“The pride of being different should not prevent the happiness of being together” Léopold Sédar Senghor

The starting point for Imane Ayissi SS25 collection was my desire to revisit two key wardrobe items worn on the African continent : the boubou worn by unisex 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 became a kind of national clothing in Cameroon.

But while working on these clothes, it appeared to me once again, their links in terms of construction with other emblematic clothes from other continents : kimono type clothes from the Asian continent for the boubou, Korean Hanbok or dresses worn by women in China during the Tang era, without forgetting European dresses from the very end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th century. It is these links, these relationships between elements of apparently extremely different cultures that fascinate me.

So I thought of Imane Ayissi Spring/Summer 2025/SS25 collection as a journey between Asia, Africa and Paris through time. This trip also involves the collaboration that I established with the painter Wang Ying, who is also a diplomat and who paints Parisian landscapes with a technique that relates to traditional Chinese painting but also impressionism. Wang Ying has produced prints on silk and new ecological fabrics based on Bamboo, but also paintings on fabric. – IMANE AYISSI