Designers
Bodil Ouédraogo
For her graduation project Bodil travelled to Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina-Faso to learn a specific technic that is used to make a luxurious fabric called Bazin-riche. In addition, she did research on the different cultural ideas of what constitutes being “well dressed” in Burkina-Faso in comparison to the West-European ideas. “My work is informed by the connections I find after thoroughly examining different cultural aspects that on first glance seem to be far apart. What drives me is finding a way in which they can complement each other so as to create unfamiliar styles.” Having lived in the Netherlands all her life, the daughter of a Dutch mother and a father from Burkina-Faso, this quest was personal.
In Burkina-Faso Bodil learned that no person stands alone and that all the pieces of a person’s history are akin. One’s identity is one big connected web in which all threads together make a unique, complex and appealing whole. “This idea about identity is the core to my collection.”
Images by Anne Lakeman