XULY.Bët is a high-fashion brand founded in 1991 by Lamine Badian Kouyate. Lamine was born in Bamako, Mali and references his Malian culture heavily in his work. His father was an activist and defender of African rights and his mother was the first Malian woman to get a doctor’s license. In his youth, Lamine was taught how to up-cycle clothing by his mother and grandmother who would reshape old clothes for him and his brothers. The concept of reusing fabrics is deeply rooted in African culture and Lamine used techniques he learned from his family when he established his fashion brand. After moving to France in 1986 Lamine went to school for architecture but found his passion lay in fabrics rather than structures. XULY.Bët is renown for its mix of textures, colors, and ideas, enclosing contemporary urban Africa as well as Parisian culture. XULY.Bët has always been a sustainable brand reworking flea market finds and using dead-stock fabrics. Lamine’s energetic style is signified by the use of red threads throughout his garments that are left raw, hanging at the end of stitching. Despite Lamine’s success, I feel like his work isn’t given enough credit in conversations of sustainability. He is also one of the few black designers, standing out amongst a mass white-centric fashion industry.
After graduating from school for architecture what inspired you to get into fashion? How did you learn to alter/construct clothes? Was this a skill foley learned through your family or did you have to do formal training?
I’ve never had a traditional training when it comes to clothing, at the time the fashion world was a rather closed one and I belonged to a generation that wanted to open up this world that seemed far away from us, even haughty sometimes.We wanted to create by ourselves, so I’ve learned quite late, as an autodidact, although my grandmother was always really creative and elegant, which helped me sharpen my vision of fashion. It’s unconscious but it’s part of the cultural background that forged me.
How did red become the signature color for XULY.Bët and what does it mean to you?
Red is the popular approach of XULY.Bët. It’s a color that represents the fights, human rights.
Upcycling in designer fashion is widely accepted now but when you first got started, it was a new concept. What was the initial criticism to Xuly Bet like? Were people adverse to the idea of wearing repurposed clothes?
Not at all ! I was addressing myself to a youth that was already very sensitive to the subject so I received some very positive feedback regarding upcycling. I wasn’t in the move to come and fight my way in the private preserve of fashion but more in the dynamic to labour other fields, propose something new to people that were expecting something similar. Expecting a new economic system, new ways of consuming and new means of elegance as well. We had to appropriate the world to ourselves, the youth had a real lust for life and to be heard.
What particular construction techniques do you often employ to personalize and revitalize the thrifted garments? Are you aware of new technological innovations that support sustainability
I have a rather pragmatic approach to it. Sustainable industrial processes are developing today, which allows me to use fabrics such as lycra from recycled bottles. But we can sadly ascertain an accumulation of clothing, on a daily basis, on the planet which I like to bring back to life by other means.For example, I retrieve white shirts or sports jerseys in non-degradable fabrics that I like to hijack to give them a new use, a new life.
Who is the Xuly Bet woman/man? How would you like them to feel when wearing your clothes?
I’m fascinated by people who have a frank idea, very precise of the woman of man. I like things that are eclectic, I can’t project myself on the identity or the personality of the consumer, I try to create a space in which we can express ourselves, evolve, but there’s no type persona. There’s a state of mind that accompanies my approach, which might make people affiliate to it. I try anyway to propose clothes for emancipated and alive people.
Xuly Bet is very true to your heritage in Maili from the patterns to the values it practices. What are your thoughts on fashion houses taking influence from cultures not of their own?
Cultural appropriation is something that has always existed, the question here to be asked is about the monopolizing, this kind of predation in which we don’t respect the populations from where this culture originated. Men have always taken inspiration elsewhere, which is also what makes us progress. In the general idea, I see it as rather positive but this appropriation can’t become nocive to the said culture.
On your first runway, models had boom boxes over their heads playing different songs, how did music affect the spirit of Xuly Bet? Also, who are some of your favorite musical artists of the past and present?
Music has an echo of emancipation that was really revealing to me when I was a teenager. Funk, disco were liberating in the fight for civic rights. This represents to me the need to exist, that’s where the XULY.Bët « FUNKIN FASHION » name is from. The artists that touched me the most are definitely Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley, although the list is long!
How has sustainability evolved both positively and negatively in the fashion industry since your introduction? How would you compare and contrast the way the movement was employed when you first started designing to present day?
There’s an awakening today regarding the climate disaster, looking at the challenge, it still remains very frivolous.There’s some sort of « sprinkling » that I would qualify to be more marketing than anything else. Despite the progress there’s still a long way. There are young designers today who try to inspire change but it would need to be wider and big houses should be actively acting on it.