Miss Aline, that’s what my mom Jolie has called me ever since I was a little girl.
She opened Couleurs d’Afrique in 1994, initially as a small wooden store in the garden of our home in Réunion Island. I was 3 at the time, so he could work while keeping an eye on my 2 older brothers and me.
In this store, Maman Jolie did African hairdressing (braiding and weaving), sold handicrafts and clothes she bought in Africa on her travels with my father, and sewed. There was no real “Couleurs d’Afrique” brand yet, but the brand was already gaining a good reputation with its customers.
The years went by and my mother’s business prospered quietly. In 2005, she moved to a more professional location, away from our home.
As for me, I wasn’t at all destined to work with her. In 2008, with a literary baccalaureate in my pocket, I began 3 years of university studies in literature and law, before realizing that nothing really appealed to me and finally deciding to become a flight attendant. I obtained my certificate in 2012 at Nanterre and was preparing to work for an international company.
But that was the year our lives turned upside down.
Maman Jolie called me one morning. My father had cancer and they needed help. I took the first ticket to my native island, Réunion, to be able to support them through this difficult ordeal. My mother stopped going to work and was at my father’s bedside 7 days a week, she even had a cot to stay in the hospital at night. I went back and forth every day between home and the hospital, bringing them clean laundry and other little errands, but above all all my love and strength.
Two years later, my father passed away. He was the love of my mother’s life, and although she was a very strong person, she fell apart. From then on, I did everything I could to be the pillar on which she could rely. It was the hardest but truest period of my life. Everything we experienced was essential and boundlessly loving. My mother unknowingly taught me what love is. My father unknowingly taught me what courage is.
But in the meantime, Couleurs d’Afrique was sinking and Mama Jolie wanted to sell the company. I was against it. This company was like her 4th child, she had devoted over 20 years of her life to it, and I felt it was a mistake. So without thinking too much, I opened a Couleurs d’Afrique facebook page on which I began to share all the treasures accumulated in the store. When my mother got a bit more courage and started doing hairstyles again, I would take photos of them and publish them on our page too. We had a great response and more and more new customers started to take an interest in us, it was just… magical.
I took over management of the store. I didn’t know anything about it, but I learned on the job. I began to take an interest in communications and marketing too. It was just a feeling most of the time, but I was passionate about it, it vibrated inside me, I felt I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Another thing is that I’ve always loved designing clothes, ever since I was a little girl. All my school notebooks, from kindergarten to college, were full of drawings of women wearing clothes ranging from the most discreet to the most exuberant. So we decided to launch our own designs, our own Couleurs d’Afrique clothing brand. My mother being a woman of taste, we never doubted that we were going to make a great team.
As Maman Jolie is Cameroonian, it was natural for us to look for seamstresses in Cameroon to assemble our collections. After finding a competent and motivated team there, we realized that if we made the necessary efforts and our collections did well, we would be able to help the many families of our seamstresses out of poverty.
So we also looked for a team in Madagascar, then Ethiopia, then Kenya (we went there with our backpacks full of fabrics to test the seamstresses we met “at random”, quite an adventure!)
Today, we have well-organized teams of seamstresses in all these countries. We’re happy to give them work and pay them very well, to give them better life prospects ♥
Through my com, I also try to share my love of life with our audience. All women are beautiful, all men are beautiful, we don’t have to be ashamed of our bodies, we don’t have to live in fear of other people’s gaze, the most important thing is to be in tune with our hearts. We’re building the world of tomorrow.
Thank you for reading our story, I send you my most positive vibes,
Miss Aline.
