Imane Ayissi 2026: Fashion as a Living Gesture

If the classic fashion show format feels familiar , models walking, turning, then vanishing from view , Imane Ayissi’s presentation offers a radically different experience.

On January 26, 2026, the designer unveiled far more than a runway show. What unfolded was an artistic exploration, situated at the intersection of fashion, performance, and a deep reflection on the creative process. Here, the show does not begin when the model steps onto the runway.

It begins much earlier — at the precise moment the garment comes alive on the body.

For this presentation, Imane Ayissi deliberately disrupted traditional fashion codes, dissolving the boundary between backstage and runway. What is usually concealed was fully exposed. In front of the audience, Jean-Marc Chauve, president of the brand, dressed the models live.

This simple yet radical gesture transformed dressing — often regarded as a purely technical step — into a foundational act of creation.

Watch the entire fashion show

The audience no longer witnessed only the finished silhouette, but the entire process: the selection of garments, the precision of the hands at work, the adjustment of fabric on the body, and only then the model’s walk.

By revealing the backstage, Ayissi questions our relationship to fashion and luxury. There is no pursuit of speed or spectacle here, but rather a commitment to the truth of the gesture. The garment is no longer a static object placed upon an idealized form; it becomes the result of a living, human, and sometimes fragile process. The model is no longer a mere support, but a present body in motion, in transformation.

BISSAKARAK

This staging resonates deeply with the inspiration behind the collection, titled BISSAKARAK.

In Ewondo, one of the languages spoken in Cameroon and the designer’s mother tongue, Bissakarak refers to the scribble — the first draft, the suspended moment when the hand experiments without certainty, when an idea exists only as a possibility.

It is precisely this fragile and exhilarating in-between that Imane Ayissi cherishes: the search for a silhouette, the emergence of volume, and the discovery of how fabrics move, breathe, and respond to the body. On paper, then on the mannequin, he lingers in that moment when nothing is yet fixed, when everything remains open to transformation.

Garment as Movement

This approach echoes practices deeply rooted in many African cultures, where garments are wrapped rather than constructed, without striving for a perfect finish, but instead privileging effect, movement, and sensation.

Clothing is never static. It is continuously evolving, offering the wearer the possibility of perpetual re-creation.

Draping, Pleats, and Cultural Lineages

Remaining faithful to his creative language, Ayissi explores draping, pleating, and knotting techniques, which here become expressions of freedom and fluidity. References intersect and engage in dialogue: Ancient Greece, African chieftaincies, and the great figures of haute couture, notably Madeleine Vionnet and Madame Grès.

Ghanaian kente, Madagascan raffia, and Nigerian woven textiles resonate with silk faille and gazar. Together, they tell a shared story — one of transformation, of becoming without erasing origins.

A Contemporary Artistic Resonance

In 2024, during a visit to the MoMA in New York, Imane Ayissi encountered the work of Mark Rothko for the first time. He was profoundly struck by the blurred edges of the color fields, by their refusal of rigid boundaries.

Several silhouettes in the collection draw from this diffuse, vibrating energy, asserting a similar freedom in the face of imposed structures and conventions.

Fashion in Constant Becoming

This presentation invites the audience to slow down, to observe, and to understand. The runway becomes an immersive experience, where the hands that dress are as significant as the bodies that walk.

With BISSAKARAK, Imane Ayissi affirms a vision of fashion as a living, evolving practice. The show becomes a space of research, the garment a transforming language, and the body a territory of expression.

An invitation to see fashion differently — as an art of time, gesture, and metamorphosis.