Dakar does not tiptoe into your senses, it storms in. With salt-washed air, rust-orange walls, and endless layers of sound and color, the Senegalese capital is a living composition. The streets pulse with rhythm: the metallic clang of car rapide doors, the call to prayer sliding over corrugated rooftops, the vinyl crackle in corner record stores. In Dakar, the body doesn’t just move—it dances. And fashion doesn’t just adorn—it performs.
DAKAR SOUND PROJECT is a visual symphony—an editorial experiment where African fashion, sound, and youth culture merge in glorious rhythm. Conceived by photographer Khaled Fhemy Mamah and stylist Hélène Redolfi, this isn’t just an editorial—it’s a mixtape in motion, where clothes, gestures, horns, and textures become instruments of cultural expression. Through layered visual storytelling, it asks: How do African cities wear their music? How do garments carry memory? How does sustainability become its own rhythm?
Shot across Dakar’s kinetic streets and sacred creative spaces—from back alleys to the Maison de la Culture Urbaine to a hidden vinyl trove behind graffiti-tagged iron gates—the project doesn’t just depict the city. It moves with it.
Here, fashion doesn’t whisper. It sings. Each look is styled like a beat: collaged, textured, and built for movement. Baby blue suiting echoes the softness of jazz. Washed-out denim recalls old cassette covers. Rusty orange and fluffy, faded pinks burn like sunsets over Ouakam rooftops. Silk scarves swirl through frames like melodies, while structured jackets bring percussive weight.
Skirts are layered over trousers. Tailoring is deconstructed, then rebuilt. These aren’t clothes as decoration—they’re clothes as language, woven from thrifted fragments and transformed into bold, rhythmic statements.
The garments themselves are time-travelers—upcycled, repurposed, and reimagined by a visionary circle of Dakar-based designers. Romzy’s silhouettes hum with Afro-futurism and spiritual militancy, while Gringo Custom constructs fashion like a beatmaker—textured, unpredictable, deeply personal. Oghewa distills minimalism into sharp, architectural lines, and Let’s Wear Vintage stands as a guardian of retro tailoring and reissue chic. Meanwhile, Kakinbow, Upcyclers Dakar, and KB Upcycling prove that memory, when recycled with intention, becomes something entirely new—something that pulses with both history and imagination.
What binds them isn’t just craft—it’s communion. A shared belief in making new out of old, and doing so together. This project is a celebration of what happens when community, creativity, and conscious fashion collide—a visual testament to the strength of emerging African designers who are remixing culture through fiber and form.
The styling is unapologetically loud. Statement rings stack like chords. Crochet coifs and oversized sunglasses beam like stage lights. Silk scarves swirl like sampled vocals. Accessories by Accessorydels and Fadel Guingue, sourced in local markets, don’t just decorate—they amplify, pushing the energy further.
This is Dakar street culture at its most alive: layered, improvised, intentional.
Space in this series is never passive. Each location is an echo chamber of heritage, hustle, and creative pulse.
At Torobee Distribution, the past crackles from every corner. Vinyl sleeves, cassettes, analog relics—they soundtrack a visual palette of amber, faded blue, chalk white, and deep indigo. It’s a place where silence only lasts until the needle drops.
MCU Dakar is less backdrop, more amplifier. It’s where youth gather to rehearse revolution, where fashion is as defiant as spoken word. Here, clothing becomes a manifesto—jackets worn like armor, pants dragging like protest banners.
But Dakar’s most electric venue is still its streets—where rhythm is born, sampled, and sent spiraling across the globe. These images remind us: African creativity doesn’t wait for galleries. It begins with curbs, corners, and public stages—with bodies in motion and spirits in sync.
In this story, even the instruments speak. Trumpets. Snares. Sound boards. They’re not props—they’re pedagogical tools.
Mildah, a professional trumpeter and educator, coached the models not just in posture but in presence. The result? Gestures that breathe, poses that pulse, images that feel more like solo performances than photo stills.
Each model becomes part jazz, part griot, part reverb of something ancestral.
Beauty, led by Rafiath Radji, resists perfection. It glows with grit. Copper dusts the eyelids like brass horns in the sun. Gloss glints like early morning dew on skin. Gold smudges radiate like memory. This is makeup as light sculpture—face beats born from Dakar’s own palette of salt, sand, and sound.
The models are not mannequins. They’re muses, each with a different tempo. Some are Dakar natives. Others come from Gabon, Benin, and the diaspora. Together, they form a visual choir—a cross-continental ensemble linked not by geography, but by vibration.
DAKAR SOUND PROJECT is more than fashion. It’s an archive. A love song. A cultural remix composed by a generation that refuses binaries: thrift or luxury, vintage or vanguard, music or fashion, tradition or future.
It invites us to listen with our eyes, and wear with intention. To remix our past. To turn every sidewalk into a stage.
And the vision doesn’t end in Dakar. Redolfi and Fhemy see this project as a growing, moving sound wave—one that will travel across the continent, tracing musical heritage from city to city. From Dakar to Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, Abidjan, and beyond, they aim to collaborate with local creatives and stylists, allowing each city’s rhythm to shape the visual score.
Because in African cities, fashion and music don’t live in separate rooms—they move through the same streets, speak the same slang, and wear the same heat.
In this remix of heritage and hustle, style becomes a statement. Sound becomes a garment. And the city becomes the song.
And Dakar? Dakar is just the first verse.
CREDITS
Khaled Fhemy Mamah – Photographer @fhemy.raw
Khaled Fhemy Mamah – Photographer @fhemy.raw
Hélène Redolfi – Art Direction & Styling @heleneredolfi
Oury Sène - Editor @ceedalstudio
Rafiath Radji – Makeup Artist @itsbeautybyrafi
Mildah – Trumpet Coaching & Instrument Guidance @mildah_miambanzila
Rafiath Radji – Makeup Artist @itsbeautybyrafi
Mildah – Trumpet Coaching & Instrument Guidance @mildah_miambanzila
Models
Djibril Kamara @djibril_kamara | @agomanagement
Cyrilus le Romain @cyr_dm
Fadel Diop @magnull_le_noir
Marina Boucal @style_modelmgt
Amadou Dia @alke_boy
Daouda Sow @daoudasow_ds
Martha B Cole @juste_martha
Nolwenn Pulzia @npulzia
Harry Jardel Allogho Mve @bighvrry
Amadou Dia @alke_boy
Daouda Sow @daoudasow_ds
Martha B Cole @juste_martha
Nolwenn Pulzia @npulzia
Harry Jardel Allogho Mve @bighvrry
Designers & Brands
Romzy @romzystudio
Gringo Custom @gringo_custum
Oghewa Design @oghewa.design
Let’s Wear Vintage @lets.wear.vintage
Kakinbow @kakinbow.shop
KB Upcycling @kb_upcycling
Upcyclers Dakar @upcyclersdakar
Sokolata @_sokolata_
Accessorydels @accessorydels
Special Thanks
MCU Dakar – Maison de la Culture Urbaine @mcudakar
Torobee Distribution – Vinyl Store & Location @torobee_distribution
El Model Agency @el_model_agency
Amadou Diane @amadouniane
Caroline Renaud @carolinezren
Chloé Gilot @chloegilot
Torobee Distribution – Vinyl Store & Location @torobee_distribution
El Model Agency @el_model_agency
Amadou Diane @amadouniane
Caroline Renaud @carolinezren
Chloé Gilot @chloegilot
Find the Story on Guzangs here: https://guzangs.com/dakar-sound-project-african-fashion-music-editorial/
