If you’ve followed Selly Raby Kane’s career right down to her Fall 2016 collection, then you’ll know that the Senegalese designer has an aesthetic, a marrying of modern techniques with easily recognizable ‘African’ symbols, typified by crayfish motifs (a staple export of Raby Kane’s home country.)
For the brand’s Spring 16 collection, they shed this well trod aesthetic and give us their first real design shift since the brand began. In the collection’s show notes, Raby Kane describes her inspiration for this season as thus:
“This season, the Selly Raby Kane girl becomes a pilgrim in her grandmother’s house . She steals a pair of filigree Ngalam earrings, embellishes her collar Digs deep into the old Dakar Its Romanticism, it’s effortless style Its economical optimism and the mythical elegance of the Senegalese woman. From tropical prints to fluid dresses, ‘A day with Miss Ndiaye’ reveals stories that are still hidden in the houses of our timeless divas and blurs the line between past future and present.”
In line with this idea, Selly Raby Kane shows her most forward and least experimental collection yet. There is not a shred of African inspired wax prints, no fur, no PVC; all staples of her previous collections. In it’s place we get cut out detailing and geometric hems on checkered pant suits. Evening dresses with embroidered bodices and gathered satin skirting. Off shoulder dresses with bright pink braided hems and belts draw the eye, colourful floral kimonos and rompers with plunging necklines titillate. This is an older, sexier, Selly Raby Kane, and one we are all too eager to get to know.
We do have to point out though, that some of the embroidery is less than stellar, and the cotton and satin evening dress is somewhat a disapointment when compared to the mass of Raby Kane’s previous work. But other than that, we are excited for this new, more global direction Raby Kane is taking with her label.
