Imane Ayissi: Material, Movement and Couture

Material, Movement and Couture

ÉPOPLI · 2026-10-12

Portrait of Imane Ayissi.Franco237 · CC BY-SA 4.0. Web-sized copy; source framing retained. · Source · Rights

The sound of a pink cape

Imane Ayissi history can begin with the vivid pink ensemble from autumn 2019: wide silk trousers beneath a rectangular cape edged with long plant fibres. The fringe moves after the body and rustles against itself. Smooth silk and fibrous strands give the same colour different surfaces. The design asks whether craft materials can determine movement and volume rather than simply decorate luxury clothes.

The Mbeuk Idourrou collection explored presence through scale. Instead of tightly describing the waist, cape and trousers leave space around the wearer. A flat rectangle bends over shoulders and back to become volume. Its swinging edge makes the moving garment different from the still photograph.

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A maker who danced and modelled

Imane Ayissi history begins in Cameroon. The V&A records his birth in 1969, to boxer Jean-Baptiste Ayissi Ntsama and former Miss Cameroon Julienne Honorine Eyenga Ayissi. He danced with Cameroon’s national ballet while designing in the country’s ready-to-wear sector. Performance and practical garment-making developed alongside each other.

Moving to Paris in the early 1990s, he modelled for houses including Dior, Lanvin and Yves Saint Laurent before concentrating on his own work. The official biography foregrounds experience in performance and workshops rather than a fashion-school degree. The FHCM and V&A date the house to 2004, distinct from the earlier practice described by the label.

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Placing handwork on the Paris calendar

Imane Ayissi history reached a new platform in 2020 with invitations to the official Paris couture calendar. Haute couture centres on specialised workshop production and individual clients. The platform changed the audience for fabrics and techniques from Ghana, Cameroon and Senegal, each with its own making context.

Weaving, embellishment and final shaping are separate contributions. The density of cloth or weight of decoration changes how a fold falls. Length and area therefore need to respond to the material and to movement. In this practice, Parisian finishing meets knowledge developed in other workshops rather than enclosing all expertise within one city.

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Spring 2025: flowers become a surface

Imane Ayissi history examines decoration and structure directly in spring 2025’s MSSAM/ASSOU. Official look 14 combines a top of flowers embroidered by hand in Senegal with wool-and-silk trousers. Repeated floral units organise the upper body, contrasted with the more continuous surface below. Their arrangement matters as much as their abundance.

Look 18 layers a handwoven Ghanaian cotton Kente coat over a long silk-taffeta dress. Opening the coat changes the proportion of woven pattern to the inner fabric’s sheen. The floral top assembles a surface from smaller units; the coat places an existing patterned plane around another garment. Both make decoration part of composition.

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Autumn 2025: a flower larger than the body

Imane Ayissi history changes the scale of the flower again in autumn 2025’s Ikorrok. AP documented giant vermilion flowers around the upper body, a satin dress with a flower at the hip, and white floral accents on a pink tailored jacket. One expands the silhouette, another concentrates attention, and the third marks a contrast within tailoring.

These placements do different work. The larger construction creates space outside the torso; the hip ornament shifts visual balance; the jacket retains its outline while gaining surface rhythm. Scale and position move the motif between sculptural presentation and familiar separates. Compared with the earlier cape, volume now emerges from masses rather than long moving strands.

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Sketches and family memory in 2026

Imane Ayissi history continues through spring 2026’s BISSAKARAK and autumn’s OZOUANDAM OLLAT. Presented on 26 January, the former takes an Ewondo term for a first sketch or scribble, considering the passage from marks on paper to volume on a mannequin. The exploratory hand becomes the subject.

The autumn presentation honours his mother and uses an expression developed in his book Grande Couture, drawing on Fang and Beti languages to connect elevated work with the act of sewing. These two projects place practical experiment alongside family memory. He remains the house’s artistic director, extending the practice into the language used to describe it.

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Different materials, equal structural roles

Imane Ayissi history connects the cape, floral top and Kente coat through the structural agency of materials. An edge in motion, an assembly of small units and a layered plane each create presence differently. Senegalese hand embroidery and Ghanaian weaving are production processes within the garment, not background references.

The house presents limited quantities and craft continuity as commitments. Reading the actual junctions—flower edges, folds of silk, an opening coat—makes that claim more tangible. His contribution can be approached through an expanded understanding of which materials and skills shape contemporary couture.

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Timeline

1969 — Birth year recorded by the V&A, Cameroon.
1990s — Modelling and garment-making in Paris.
2004 — House established, as recorded by FHCM and V&A.
2019 — Mbeuk Idourrou collection.
2020 — Begins guest presentations on the official couture calendar.
2025 — MSSAM/ASSOU and Ikorrok.
2026 — BISSAKARAK and OZOUANDAM OLLAT.