2020 – 2021 : The crossover.
Senegal is a rain-fed cotton grower like many other African countries that have strived to maintain a cotton culture in tune with nature. Without any consumption of water from the water table or any other drinking source. The seeds are watered by heavy rains and the fibers picked by hand, which guarantees a high level of purity.
However, as in many other African countries, the fiber is exported almost entirely in its raw state and then begins a long and winding journey. Spinning in Bangladesh, weaving in China or Portugal (depending on the final customer), local garment manufacturing (for the most conscientious) and international marketing.
We wondered how to value this form of culture so little known and apocryphal.
2022 - : The Renaissance of Falé.
Since the summer of 2021, our community of craftwomen has embarked on reconstituting and revalorising our ancestral techniques of weaving by restoring the African tradition of spinning organic rain fed cotton, the FALÉ.
We offer support to 200 female spinners in the villages of Fayil, Nérane, Simal, Fa Sakhor, Mar lodj in the Sine Saloum region (Southwestern Senegal).
We buy the organic cotton (Ecocert certified) and rain fed cotton from the cotton company that federates all the cotton producers in the country.
It is cleaned and carded by a local textile factory, before being distributed to the 5 villages where our craftswomen live so that they can do the spinning by hand. We collect once a month from our collective. We never leave their homes without taasu mixed with tagg and accompanied by her dance. Each woman gives us her Falé yarn in a cotton bag with her name on it.
We ensure the development and sustainability of their work through research and historical reconstruction, and through low-tech innovation*.
Each of our creations is entirely handmade in our workshop-laboratory installed in Djilor (Sine Saloum). Many crafts, such as traditional weaving, traditional hand embroidery, crochet, mix and evolve to feed our creativity.
* Taasu: "Senegalese popular poems or stories that can be satirical, eulogistic, entertaining or moralizing". Mohamed Mbougar SARR, De pur hommes, Editions Jimsaan, Dakar, 2018.
* Tagg: songs of genealogical praise.
* Low-tech innovation : technology for developing useful, accessible and sustainable improvements.