Imane Ayissi (born 1969) is a Cameroonian dancer, performer, model, and haute couture fashion designer.
Ayissi is the son of Jean-Baptiste Ayissi Ntsama, a champion boxer, [1] and Julienne Honorine Eyenga Ayissi, the first crowned Miss Cameroon after the country gained independence in 1960. [2] His brothers and sisters are dancers and singers. During his childhood, he was a member of the Ballet National du Cameroun. He toured with Patrick Dupont and other singers and choreographers. [3]
He moved to France in the 1990s and worked as a model for Dior, Givenchy, and Lanvin. [4]
Ayissi founded his own label in 2004. His designs have been worn by Zendaya and Angela Bassett. [2]
He is a guest member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture.
He is the first black African designer [5] to have his designs shown on the Paris haute couture catwalk. [1] Only two other African designers have shown at the Paris show: Alphadi (Nigeria) in 2004 and Noureddine Amir (Morocco) in 2018. [2]
Jean Paul Gaultier is a French haute couture and prêt-à-porter fashion designer. He is described as an "enfant terrible" of the fashion industry and is known for his unconventional designs with motifs including corsets, marinières, and tin cans. Gaultier founded his eponymous fashion label in 1982, and expanded with a line of fragrances in 1993. He was the creative director for French luxury house Hermès from 2003 to 2010, and retired following his 50th-anniversary haute couture show during Paris Fashion Week in January 2020.
Christian Marie Marc Lacroix is a French fashion designer. The name may also refer to the company he founded.
Madeleine Vionnet was a French fashion designer. Vionnet trained in London before returning to France to establish her first fashion house in Paris in 1912. Although it was forced to close in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War, it re-opened after the war and Vionnet became one of the leading designers of 1920s-30s Paris. Vionnet was forced to close her house in 1939 and retired in 1940.
A fashion week is a week-long fashion industry event where fashion designers, brands, or "houses" display their latest collections in runway fashion shows to buyers and the media which influences upcoming fashion trends for the current and approaching seasons.
Christian Dior SE, commonly known as Dior, is a French multinational luxury fashion house controlled and chaired by French businessman Bernard Arnault, who also heads LVMH. Dior holds 42.36% shares and 59.01% of voting rights within LVMH.
Hedi Slimane is a French photographer and couturier. From 2000 to 2007, he was creative director for Dior Homme. From 2012 to 2016, he was the creative director for Yves Saint Laurent. Since February 2018, Slimane has been the creative, artistic and image director of Celine.
Cameroon has a rich and diverse culture made up of a mix of about 250 indigenous populations and just as many languages and customs. The country is nicknamed "Little Africa" as geographically, Cameroon consists of coastline, mountains, grass plains, forest, rainforest and desert, all of the geographical regions in Africa in one country. This also contributes to its cultural diversity as ways of life and traditional food dishes and traditions vary from geographical region to geographical region.
Viktor & Rolf is a Dutch avant-garde luxury fashion house founded in 1993 by Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren. For more than twenty years, Viktor & Rolf have sought to challenge preconceptions of fashion and bridge the divide between fashion and art. Viktor & Rolf have designed both haute couture and ready-to-wear collections. The duo is renowned for their avant-garde designs, which rely heavily on theatrical and performative fashion runways.
Guy Laroche was a French fashion designer and founder of the eponymous company.
Riccardo Tisci is an Italian fashion designer. He studied in Italy at the Design Istituto d’Arte Applicata in Cantù until the age of 17, and then graduated from London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 1999. In 2005, Tisci was creative director for Givenchy Women's haute couture and ready-to-wear lines. In May 2008 he was additionally menswear and accessories designer of the Givenchy men's division. In March 2018, he was appointed chief creative officer of Burberry, succeeding Christopher Bailey.
Paris Fashion Week is a series of designer presentations held semi-annually in Paris, France, with spring/summer and autumn/winter events held each year. Dates are determined by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. Paris Fashion Week is held at venues throughout the city.
Fashion design is the art of applying design, aesthetics, clothing construction and natural beauty to clothing and its accessories. It is influenced by culture and different trends, and has varied over time and place. "A fashion designer creates clothing, including dresses, suits, pants, and skirts, and accessories like shoes and handbags, for consumers. He or she can specialize in clothing, accessory, or jewelry design, or may work in more than one of these areas."
Giambattista Valli is an Italian fashion designer. He is from Rome, Italy. His collections, both ready to wear and Haute couture, are presented semi-annually during Paris Fashion Week.
Haute couture is the creation of exclusive custom-fitted high-end fashion design. The term haute couture is French, "haute" meaning "high" or "elegant," and "couture" translating to "sewing" or "dressmaking." The term haute couture generally refers to a specific type of upper garment common in Europe during the 16th to the 18th century, or to the upper portion of a modern dress to distinguish it from the skirt and sleeves. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Paris became the centre of a growing industry that focused on making outfits from high-quality, expensive, often unusual fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable of sewers—often using time-consuming, hand-executed techniques. Couture translates literally from French as "dressmaking", sewing, or needlework and is also used as a common abbreviation of haute couture and can often refer to the same thing in spirit.
Ma Ke is a Chinese fashion designer. She has two clothing labels: EXCEPTION de Mixmind, a ready-to-wear line started in 1996 and retailed in China; and WUYONG, an haute couture line founded in 2006. In 2007, Ma Ke starred in the award-winning documentary Useless by Chinese director Jia Zhangke. In 2008, her fashion house WUYONG was appointed as a Guest member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in France.
Bowie Wong is a Hong Kong-born Australian fashion and stage designer.
Maison Margiela, formerly Maison Martin Margiela, is a French luxury fashion house founded by Belgian designer Martin Margiela and Jenny Meirens in 1988 and headquartered in Paris. The house produces both haute couture-inspired artisanal collections and ready-to-wear collections, with the former influencing the designs of the latter. Product lines include womenswear, menswear, jewellery, footwear, accessories, leather goods, perfumes and household goods. Known for deconstructive and avant-garde designs with unconventional materials, Maison Margiela has traditionally held live shows in unusual settings, for example empty metro stations and street corners. Models' faces are often obscured by fabric or long hair to direct attention to the clothes and design. Margiela resigned as creative designer in 2009 and John Galliano was appointed to the role in 2014.
Yemi Osunkoya is a New York-based Nigerian fashion designer and the founder and creative director of Kosibah Creations - a couture bridal and eveningwear fashion brand. His haute couture brand, "Kosibah" label was named after his mother's name "Cosiba", which, in the Republic of Benin, represents the "day name" of a female child born on a Sunday. His company Kosibah Creations designs luxury bridal gowns and evening wears for high-value women across the UK, Nigeria, South Africa, US and Caribbean.
Maison Schiaparelli is a haute couture house created by avant-garde Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli in 1927, and moving towards luxury ready-to-wear after being bought in 2007 by Diego Della Valle. The house is famous for its eccentric fashions, the use of Surrealism in its collections, its sense of humour, the "shocking Pink" color, gender crossing, and its use of human anatomy depictions, among other unconventional themes.