“It was a protest,” Lamine Badian Kouyaté half-jokingly said on a call about his spring 2023 show, presented on a sidewalk near the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. This was the third guerilla show of the Malian-born designer’s career. His 1992 debut was a collection of all-black looks put on in the Tuileries outside of Karl Lagerfeld’s show; his sophomore effort the next year was staged outside of Jean Paul Gaultier’s show and the models wore white.
The backstory of this season’s en plein air affair is a complicated one, but it seems that Kouyaté and his business partner Rodrigo Martinez recently discovered the city’s Climate Academy and tried to arrange a show there, but were rebuffed. This was a surprise and a disappointment to the team as Kouyaté has been working responsibly for two decades. But the designer, who is nothing if not resilient, kept true to his DIY, make-much-with-little approach and managed to find opportunity in this roadblock. Another one presented itself when a cadre of police officers almost stopped the presentation because of a mistake with a sound permit. Eventually, though, the show went on and the spring 2023 Xuly-Bët experience became a full circle moment, in terms of format, casting, community building, and, yes, clothes.
Local business people lent their support and spaces, which were used as makeshift backstages, while the cast “came as an act of kindness, there was no money involved,” explained Martinez. Infact, many were long-time members of the Xuly-Bët family, including Debra Shaw. Barbara Blanchard, who opened the show, was Kouyaté’s first business partner, and Michelle Elie, who appeared along side her three sons, was an early muse. Also making appearances were ’90s models Chrystèle Saint Louis Augustin and Vladimir McCrary. All of this combined to support the designer’s idea, which he described on a call as showing how “generations can work together.”
Another related focus was on the lasting value of good design. Models wore (old and oldish) archival looks mixed with current season styles. Kouyaté says his personal “fetish item” is an old cropped Funkin’ Fashion hoodie; this editor was thrilled to see the return of red-stitched nylon layering pieces. “The stuff that we do with tights, that’s my very, very beginning,” the designer noted. Newer was Kouyaté’s concentration on menswear, which he developed in concert with his studio manager. Yes, there were men in skirts, pants with a wonderful flare, and midriff-bearing jackets.
There was a lot of tartan as well, and it was used in tribute to the Tati-plaid loving designers Azzedine Alaïa and Vivienne Westwood. “I wanted to give them a hug,” Kouyaté explained. Around the time that he was starting out, Westwood had just received an award and gave her prize money to him. “She really gave me great support when I started. I was really young and she really took my hand. I was really shy when I first started, and especially in Paris they’re very, very snobbish, so when they see a black African guy come in and disturb their comfort—Vivienne really understood my experience.”
Models who walked in The White Collection in 1993 carried boomboxes on their shoulders; in this show, presented 30 years later, each model held a personal speaker. For his part, Kouyaté has always walked to his own tune, and he maintains his fighting spirit. “We have to be concerned about the future,” the designer said. “Our industry needs to really change the way of producing.”
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