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"It's an honor", Ayissi, 51, told Reuters backstage before the
show, referring to the decision, after many years of knocking
him back, to finally admit him to the select club of haute
couture fashion houses showing in Paris.
"I have been fighting for 28 years, dedicated all my life to the
work. The French Federation of Haute Couture and Fashion opened
its door to me after it rejected my application many times,
because it was not the right time or my work did not match with
expectations. But this time, it worked", he said.
Ayissi started young, making outfits for his mother who was a
winner of the Miss Cameroon beauty pageant in the 1960s.
Drifting into modeling, he moved to Paris thirty years ago, and
walked the runway for high-end stylists including Yves
Saint-Laurent, Pierre Cardin, Givenchy and Lanvin.
He later decided to devote himself fully to working as a
designer, defining a style he described as minimal, sleek and
elegant "with a certain mastery of fabric and form".
For his show late on Thursday, which was chosen to close this
year's edition of the Paris Haute Couture fashion week, models
walked down the catwalk in a Paris hotel to a soundtrack of
African music.
Models showed off gowns in the style of contemporary Western
fashion but with a twist: they were made of organic Faso Dan
Fani, a cotton cloth from Burkina Faso woven in strips.
Another outfit, a silk dress, was adorned with stained tree bark
cut out into the shape of flowers.
"I do what I can - to show real African fabrics, tell stories,"
Ayissi said of his collection.
(Reporting Laetitia Volga and Michaela Cabrera, editing by
Christian Lowe and Andrew Heavens)
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