Africa economy
In Burkina Faso, haute couture meets international standards
Audio 02:20
For this first call, 74 projects were funded for an amount of 1.2 billion CFA francs.
© CC0 Pixabay/Anna Ventura
By: Yaya Boudani Follow
2 mins
In Burkina Faso, designers and couturiers benefit from the support of the government to bring themselves up to the level of the international market.
Stylist Sébastien Bazemo has thus received support from the Cultural and Tourism Development Fund to provide training to his teams.
Generally speaking, this year, the Creative Industries Support Program received 11 billion CFA francs for 74 projects supported in the world of culture.
This program is co-financed by the European Union, the State of Burkina Faso, the African Fund for Culture and Swiss Cooperation.
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From our correspondent in Ouagadougou,
For a month, the couturiers of the Sébastien Bazemo house benefited from training in European haute couture.
Grégoire Lavri is the workshop manager.
“
Before, we worked freehand
,” he explains.
“
Which was a bit difficult.
When you work freehand, there are traces.
And there, she came (the trainer, editor's note) to show us the usefulness of patronage in the work
.
»
The training concerned the requirements of new international fashion trends, according to Rose Bombo, model maker and fashion designer who came from Paris for the occasion.
“
The goal is to enable African fashion designers to sell internationally
,” says Rose Bombo.
“
But African clothing is always approximate, because we sew a little randomly.
Let's put ourselves on the international scale.
This scale is neither French, nor Burkinabè, nor Cameroonian, it represents the sizes of human morphology.
Let's already respect the style to begin with.
And that's what I worked with them.
»
“It was important to know the standards and to respect them”
According to the stylist Sébastien Bazemo, it is the conquest of the international market that motivated the choice of this module for this training.
“
I don't think we will have the size difficulty that we had.
Often, the customer says to you: “
size forty, here, is large, while at another it is small
”.
We have problems.
For us, it was important to know the standards and to respect them
”, maintains Sébastien Bazemo.
To carry out this project, the designer received financial support from the Cultural and Tourism Development Fund.
For this first call, 74 projects were funded for an amount of 1.2 billion CFA francs.
"
The Fund was set up to develop the economic dimension of culture and tourism
",
explains Alphonse Tougouma, Director General of the Cultural and Tourism Development Fund.
“
Because you know it's a sector with great potential.
It can create jobs and reduce inequalities.
These are sectors that should not be neglected in a dynamic of economic and social development
.
»
A hundred projects will be selected and financed for the second phase with a financial envelope of more than 2 billion CFA francs.
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Burkina Faso
Fashion
Africa culture
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