Wafrica – Blending West African fashion with the kimono

Where did your inspiration come from?

Serge: "In 2006, I'd been sent to Tokyo, Japan by my employer at the time, who was an automotive car design company in Paris. They sent me to Japan to design cars mainly, and I happened to find an interest in Japanese culture and Japanese aesthetic.

When I arrived, I found Japan to be in in many ways very close to West Africa in terms of cultural behaviour, and other aspects of the Japanese culture, like animism, was very much connected with what we practice believes in in West Africa, more specifically in Cameroon.

Animism is the idea that nature has a soul, and every element nature has a soul. I was surprised by the way that Japan still have that Shinto practice even today, and I started to trace a connection with Vodou in West Africa. So that's more of a spiritual connection, but I believe that in spirituality you do have some, ethics that comes with spirituality and with ethics, you have aesthetics that comes with that too.

So for me, it was a direct connection between, that aesthetic from Japan and the one we have in West Africa, and again, try to juxtapose both of them and find a new language."

How did Wafrica come about?

Serge: "Wa (和) is the ancient word used to say Japan, and also to say harmony at the same time. By connecting 'Wa' and 'Africa', it's the idea that there's a connection between Japanese and African culture, and the importance and the need to create a third aesthetic.

The third aesthetic is something for me that is not entirely Japanese or West African, but a new territory of expression, a new place where we can juxtapose and create a new dialog between those two, cultural icons. I chose the kimono, to start that adventure back in 2007, and basically captured the essence of the kimono, putting it together with what is very iconic in West Africa – the fabrics and the designs that people wear there. We did a bit of work quite a bit of work, try to connect both together and see what comes up.

So Wafrica was born then back in Tokyo, through a discussion and collaboration with Odasho. It wasn't very easy at the beginning because they didn't really know the point, they didn't really understand where it was going. But very rapidly, because they're smart and they're willing to innovate in their own field, they came back to me and said, 'Okay, this sounds very interesting, and we would like to to collaborate and take it to a new place.'"

How hard was it turn West African fabrics into a kimono?

Serge: "I didn't design the fabrics at the very beginning, I simply purchased the fabrics for the few first ones.

What is important, in a kimono is that all the parts have to really connect up harmoniously, and that's what's difficult, because when you use fabric that is not traditionally used for making kimono, then you have to find a way to make sure every part connects very well. And that's the hard bit, because if you mess up that bit, then it doesn't look like anything like a kimono. There is some kind of trial to it, but, it can really go wrong very quickly."

How does your design differ from a traditional kimono?

Serge: "Well, if you look carefully at, for example, the kimono that is on display in Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, you will see that I emphasised the lining of the kimono, which is not the case usually in, traditional Japanese kimono, where the lining can be precious, but it's supposed to be hidden.

So the expressivity that I was trying to present here is more, the opposite way: making the lining very strong, and very present, whilst the pattern of the kimono can be a little bit more absent. So in this kimono the lining bursts out of the kimono – there's a crack and the light comes out."

How easy was it to blend West African fashion with the kimono?

Serge: "Well, it's an interpretation. In West Africa, women's shapes are not the same as what you have in Japan. The shapes are much more expressive, more round, so to speak. And so women don't try to hide their shape, it's out there, and we dance differently and body motions are different. There is much more extroversion in terms of body expression.

So it wasn't easy because there's a the kimono is a very strict kind of cut, but to be able to create that, that kind of connection, you have to cheat a little bit here and there to make things work smoothly without anybody seeing that it's different. So it was actually quite a challenge, but collaborating with Odasho was really good for that, because they understood the challenges, because if the lining comes out, it changes the pattern of the entire kimono, so we had to work in collaboration to make sure that you keep the image of the kimono, and the feel it."

Have you continued to collaborate with Odasho?

Serge: "Absolutely, absolutely. The collaboration, goes on. In Japan, collaboration continues forever, for a lifetime, especially when you manage to find a space of conversation where you respect each other and where you challenge each other. We try to work in a way that we will continue collaborating until we reach perfection, with an understanding that we will probably never reach it, but each time we collaborate, we are getting closer.

We are now working on a different kind of collaboration because we want to make the kimono come back to the market, because the kimono market is dying in Japan, at least from the Japanese perspective, where moreso a lot of kimono that is worn or rented is by foreigners, which I think is a good thing to keep it alive. But I believe that the future of kimono is maybe not in Japan, but in places like West Africa, because if you bring that kind of cut garment in Africa and you let people wear it the way they want, it is quite possible that they would find several new stylings to that same garment that you had traditionally worn in Japan."

You can see Serge's Wafrica kimono on display in Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk, which is open until 05 January 2025.