Mossi Traore brings France's forgotten suburbs to Paris fashion week

Mossi Traore is the only French designer in the official Paris fashion week line-up to operate outside the chi-chi boulevards of the capital, staying faithful to the mixed suburb where he grew up.

For more snobbish Parisians, the "banlieues" -- including commuter towns like Villiers-sur-Marne -- conjure images of urban riots and drab tower blocks, not the obvious setting for a luxury fashion label. But Traore, who grew up here as one of seven children to Malian immigrants -- his father a rubbish collector and his mother a cleaner -- is proud of his "made in the banlieue" couture.

He was back on the catwalk on Tuesday for his latest Paris Fashion Week show, another sophisticated collection of his trademark flowing drapes and pleats.

A few days earlier, he gave AFP a tour of the "beautiful chaos" of his atelier -- located on the second floor of a nondescript building in Villiers-sur-Marne, squeezed between a job centre and a youth club. "I like to navigate between Paris and the suburbs," he said. "The inspiration is just as strong when I'm here, in the heart of my neighbourhood as when I'm in Paris in the galleries and museums, or travelling abroad.

"I want to restore the image of the banlieues and all my brothers here. I love the cultural mix."

Training academy

Traore's dreams as a youngster were focused more on football than fashion, until a moment of revelation at 18 when he saw an exhibition of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto's work.

After some tricky early years, he set up his own label in 2017. Three years later, he won the top prize of the National Association for the Development of the Fashion Arts, and joined the Paris Fashion Week line-up. Traore wants other locals to follow in his footsteps, and has set up a training school alongside his workshop, which he dreams could one day be the fashion equivalent of Barcelona FC's fabled football training academy, la Masia.

"From the start, we took people who had never done any sewing, who had applied just like that. But I had a blast and decided to make it a real diploma course," he said. There were immediate successes, with one of his first students winning an LVMH graduate prize, and others joining Chanel, Dior, Pierre Cardin and others.

Busying over an organza bustier, one of the current crop, 26-year-old Zouleha Mandzomana, is all praise for Traore. "He really tries to push us to our limits and not stay in our little suburbs settling for whatever," said Mandzomana, who dreams of joining Chanel, one of the houses that supports the school.

As for Traore, he dreams of the opposite, of one day bringing the fashion world to him -- of seeing President Emmanuel Macron and Vogue supremo Anna Wintour on the front row of a show in his neighbourhood.

"With all these debates in France about immigration and blah blah blah... I want to show that there's also a positive side to immigration, that the banlieue can be a laboratory for talent and creativity."(AFP)