Why this in-flight magazine is the fashion industry’s new must-read

Paris, France
CNN
—

A generation of aviators will remember the name Air Afrique, the pan-African airline that operated from 1961 to 2002.

In its twilight years, the airline was in significant debt, and downtown in air travel after the September 11 attacks on New York City finally put the company out of business.

But before that, the aircraft carrier, which is jointly owned by the countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Cte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Mauritania, Niger, Republic of the Congo and Senegal, is known as one of the most prominent in Africa. West, not only for its service (airlines fly to cities as far as New York and Abu Dhabi, and across Europe) but for its reputation as a giant of mobile culture. balafon, its in-flight magazine, will highlight artwork from across the continent; his canon now stands as an early anthology of modern West African creativity and idealism.

And today, the airline and its publications are remembered by a new annual title, aptly named Air Africa and is produced by an art collective with the same moniker. The first issue of the new magazine was launched Friday at a party at the Center Pompidou, Paris’ famed arts and culture complex, with backing from Italian fashion label Bottega Veneta. It aims to highlight the work of a new generation of creatives from across the global African diaspora.

We want to revive the African transcendence that Air Afrique represents, said Lamine Diaoune, founder and creative director of collective Air Afrique, in a statement. Our mission is to preserve this heritage, to put Air Afrique back into the cultural conversation, and build on their example of cultural engagement.

We’d watch a lot of African films from the sixties and seventies and eighties. In those films, you have a lot of references to the airline, because it’s such a powerful symbol, explains Djibi Kb, co-founder of the Air Afrique collective and contributor to the new magazine. We also spoke with former airline employees, and we traveled to Abidjan (in Cte d’Ivoire) and Dakar (in Senegal) to interview them. That was really helpful because they had a lot of archives back then.

We were born in the nineties or the 2000s, so we don’t know much about that. But it’s really a big part of West African history, so we decided to come together in 2020, continued Kb of the collective. We’ve done exhibitions, cin clubs, and got people talking about airlines, and how they help African artists and African filmmakers. It really is more than just a flight.

In 2022, the collective installed a sixties African-centric style travel agency at the Kaleidoscope Manifesto Festival in Paris, as one example of how they can revive and retell the story of the airline. It got the attention of the fashion world. Bottega Veneta, which has publicly committed to collaborating with independent print media platforms and previously helped relaunch it BUTTthe cult favorite magazine documenting alternative gay culture and sexuality, comes calling.

With our print partnership, we recognize the expertise, creativity and silent power of small-scale publications that give voice to specific communities, said a spokesperson for Bottega Veneta in a statement announcing the launch of Air Afriques. Each magazine exemplifies quality design, editorial rigor, and vision clarity and originality.

When Bottega approached us asking what we wanted to do with the project, we said, the magazine. Immediately, said Kb.

African AirThe first issue is a beautiful, richly colored testament to the past and present of West Africa from the mid to late centuries and its modern global diaspora. The contents of the magazine are overseen by its chief editor, Amandine Nana. (All members of the Air Afrique collective have a background in a creative field; each also has projects outside the group.) Replication of the archive page from Balafon back issues stand alongside new pieces, with threads and connections neatly intertwined between the two.

What’s interesting is the discussion between the archives (Balafon) and now, said Nana. One example of this in the new magazine is a photo essay that pairs the work of Paul Kodjo, a post-independence photographer from Ivory Coast, with text from writer and archivist Marie-Hlne Tusiama, who was tasked with dreaming up the dialogue that might be in the photographs, Nana explained. It becomes cinematic.

The visually striking editorial, titled Scnes damour Abidjan, presents a series of black-and-white compositions of the Ivory Coast capital in its contemporary appearance, its inhabitants impeccably stylized, and energized when in doubt, with a feeling of being on edge. something new. Beneath the image of two women standing in front of a dilapidated colonial-era building, Tusiama conjures up a saying: Abidjan is the city of everything said and everything known.

There’s so much more to take: A brightly lit cover, shot by Kb through a nostalgic lens, of French rapper Tiakola. There is an original photograph of Pope Jean-Paul II on an Air Afrique jet in 1980 during one of the Pope’s Africa tours.

And there’s an image of the new Bottega Veneta campaign, featuring a limited-edition capsule collection of covers designed by French-Sudan designer Abdel El Tayeb.

El Tayeb is a member of the Bottega Venetas studio, and was commissioned by the brand’s creative director, Matthieu Blazy, to imagine the throws of wool, leather, and shearing the house’s own archives. Labeled by her own brand El Tayeb Nation, the blankets have an Afro-futuristic look, but are inspired by the vibrant patterns of traditional clothing worn by El Tayeb’s mother.

Ultimately, says Kb, the ultimate goal of the collective is to have a conversation. To understand the world we live in today, and to be inspired by our past, I believe all points of view are ultimately connected, at some point. So, just as travel itself can open up new perspectives and enrich one’s view of the world, so can in-flight magazines.