Bisrat Negassi

Bisrat Negassi, a woman of slim build with a soft voice and beautiful features, works from her studio in the 13th arrondisement in Paris, a small, peaceful place reminiscent of a 1950’s atelier, floating with light and stocked with colourful fabrics.

‘Bisrat’ means someone who brings good news and ‘Negassi’, my surname, means a person who is going to be crowned,’ she explains. Negassi is the latest addition to the Parisian fashion scene. The label was established in 2004 and her last show was her third appearance at Paris fashion week.

Negassi went a long way to get her foot in the door of the fashion world. Aged six, she was forced, along with her family, to flee her homeland of Eritrea in East Africa due to civil war. They spent two years in Sudan seeking asylum before being admitted into Germany. After schooling in Hamburg, Negassi went on to study architecture at Luebeck University, but felt disillusioned with her career choice: ‘Something was wrong for me with being an architect. You have your ideas, you put them on paper, and then you do the models. Not being sure whether I would see all my models in reality was annoying me.’

A career in fashion seemed more satisfying for Negassi. At a fashion show, she met Lamine Kouyate (Xuly Bet), the renowned Parisian fashion designer of Malinese origin, who, incidentally, also used to study architecture before turning to fashion. Kouyate invited Negassi to Paris to do an internship with Xuly Bet before making any decisions on whether to pursue a career in the fashion industry. Convinced of her future in fashion, Negassi returned to Germany after the internship and was immediately offered a place in fashion design at Hamburg’s Jak Fashion Academy. After graduating she moved back to Paris, the city she fell in love with, to pursue her career as a fashion designer.

Summing up her journey from arriving in Paris as a graduate, to showing at Paris fashion week in 2004, Negassi remembers: ‘I came to Paris, found my studio, met the right people, and everything went in the right way.’ After working for several Parisian labels, she created her first collection out of anger. ‘I was supposed to work with a specific label and it didn’t work out, so I thought ‘why should I give all my ideas to other people if I can do all the things myself?’ In that night I took all my fabrics and I just started with my first collection.’

Philippe Mensah, a Parisian hair stylist who supported her from the beginning, introduced her to the famous model Yasmin Warsame. ‘She is from Somalia, which is next to my country, so we had some stuff in common,’ the designer explains. ‘We met, we talked, and we thought we had known each other forever.’ Warsame started to model for Negassi and introduced her to Kithe Brewster, a stylist from New York. All of her shows so far have been styled by Brewster, who also styles New York designer Steven Burrows and Kai Millard Morris, wife of soul legend Stevie Wonder.

Her collections are becoming the secret tip of Paris Fashion Week. Inspired by her idyllic neighbourhood on the outskirts of Paris, her extensive travel and remarkable childhood experiences, she brings a new approach to the conservative Parisian fashion scene.

The designer expressed her versatility in her first collection of March 2004, ‘Choose Your Way Different Each Day’. The collection was based on short stories and poems, which she wrote and translated into the collection. Most of the garments were designed to be worn in different ways.

Negassi feels happy to be able to follow her passion in fashion design, but not content to tread water, she has other plans to run alongside this. ‘If I wouldn’t do fashion, I don’t really know what else I would do. I can forget the whole world around me and just create and do my dresses.

That is the most important thing for me, but it is also important to have links with something more social. If I would do only fashion I would die.’ Through her talent, hard work and ability to network, Negassi has fulfilled her ambition of becoming a fashion designer..

For the future, she talks about ‘using fashion for something better’ and creating ‘art villages and schools for children who are traumatised from war or famine.’ Having already accomplished so much, for Negassi the possibilities are endless

Text: Eva-Tokumbo Geschoell, BOLZ Magazine Issue 7, 2005