Fall finds Mossi Traoré at a turning point. Last September the designer signed an exclusive partnership with Chanel for Les Ateliers Alix, the haute couture training school he founded a decade ago. That deal will open the doors for students from the Paris region and all around the world to participate in “a three-year course of excellence.”
Importantly, the move will also free the designer up to reconnect with his own brand, which is also moving into its second decade.
Having chased his dreams—and made several come true—from the suburbs of Paris to Bollywood, Japan, the US, and back, moving into a new chapter now means “recounting an allure, finding an emotion, and reconnecting,” Traoré said. “I’m trying to reassert a kind of couture that’s maybe less about exploration and adventure but that can be worn every day,” he explained.
The style and technique of Madame Grès are what made Traoré fall in love with fashion in the first place. There were clear traces of that enduring obsession here, in pleated details on a couple of black dress-over-pants ensembles; at the scrunched hem of a camel sack dress; and in the graceful drape of a skirt on a sleeveless taupe dress. The artfully layered knits—oversized, asymmetrical, wrenched to one side—felt more contemplative.
Black-and-white prints extrapolated from the designer’s own scribbles and gradient ensembles, like a white-pink-indigo tank and long skirt, landed like placeholders. That’s logical enough: Between running a couture training school and working to ensure its future and picking up prizes right and left—most recently the designer was named the Remarkable Personality in the Who’s Next category of the Who’s Who ranking of people championing French excellence—Traoré has only so many hours remaining to focus on his indie label.
Backstage, the designer allowed as much. “I am a child of Paris and the suburbs—I need to keep one foot in each,” he said. “Now I’m trying to embody the Mossi woman and tell a story that can find its place within Paris Fashion Week.”
There’s no question that Traoré has plenty to say: His inspirations, projects, and clothes are set to be the subject of an exhibition at the Mucem museum in Marseille next January. By then, another PFW will have come and gone, offering Mossi a chance to lay down its narrative clearly.
