Not only is he joining fashion's creme de la creme, the Cameroonian couturier is shaking up the stereotype of what "African materials" are by refusing to use wax prints which he dismisses as "colonial".
Highly colourful wax cotton prints flooded West Africa after Dutch mills began turning out millions of rolls of the material with patterns borrowed from Indonesian batik in the 19th century.
"Still when we talk about African
fashion it's always wax, which is a real pity, because its killing our own African heritage," Ayissi told AFP.