Adama Paris: “The fashion I promote is multicultural, not just geographical”.
When you cross the threshold of Saargale, her Parisian concept store located a stone’s throw from the Bastille, you’re not just entering a boutique. You enter the world of Adama Paris, a woman for whom fashion is a tool of power, identity and business. In 2020, speaking to Ramata Diallo, the designer delivered an uncompromising vision. Five years later, the 2025 edition of Dakar Fashion Week confirms every one of her intuitions.
The secret of success
When asked about her career path, Adama Paris dismisses the idea of a miracle recipe. For her, success is a simple but demanding equation: Passion + Organization + Training.
“The model of knowing how to do just one thing is obsolete. Today, you have to multitask.”
The woman who learned “on the job” insisted back in 2020 on the need for continuous training. By 2025, this vision had become a reality, with the increased professionalization of Senegal’s fashion professions, where we no longer speak only of “creation”, but of “supply chain” and “digital strategy”.
Refusing a simplistic definition
The heart of Ramata’s work is to define African fashion. But for Adama, the exercise is perilous. Why confine such diverse creations to a single definition?
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The folklore trap: Adama warns against Western definitions that reduce continental fashion to the “traditional”.
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Multicultural fashion: “My fashion is not defined by a single culture. It’s a fashion of tomorrow.”
Dakar Fashion Week 2025
If Adama Paris spoke in 2020 of “structuring”, the 2025 edition of Dakar Fashion Week has reached a new milestone. No longer content with simply parading clothes, it has set a new global standard. The show’s visuals were particularly striking, with a catwalk in the form of an ocean crossing from the island of Ngor to Dakar.
Africa as the driving force behind circular fashion
In 2025, the event focused on textile sovereignty, with designers using processed local fibers (organic cotton, raffia fibers, natural dyes) via semi-industrial production units based on the continent.
The triumph of the “Digital-First” approach
True to the “multitask” spirit advocated by Adama, the 2025 edition incorporated virtual showrooms and “See Now, Buy Now” systems, enabling buyers from all over the world to order parts in real time, definitively breaking geographical isolation.
Unprecedented diaspora-continent cohesion
Adama’s 2020 vision of synergy between diaspora and locals has become the driving force of 2025. Collaborations between designers based in Paris, New York and Dakar are no longer exceptions, but the beating heart of an industry that now generates solid, quantifiable sales.
Beyond the podiums of 2025, the 2020 interview reminds us that nothing can be built without an iron will. Adama Paris has transformed his dream into an empire that supports hundreds of people. In 2025, African fashion is no longer a “trend”, it’s a formal economic pillar, proud of its roots and resolutely focused on the global future.
