Tribute to her father:
At the Vlisco Fashion Fund, Bodo materialised her concept ‘Vlisco in associative feminine mode.’ When Anne Béatrice won the competition, she overflowed with joy. To her, this victory paid tribute to the memory of her father who was always steadfast, encouraging, and generous with her in her studies.
Cameroon in the spotlight:
“These results have given me confidence in my ability to achieve different thematic collections, addressed to an African audience who is becoming more and more glamorous and demanding.” From this, she wants “to make Cameroon a window for the visibility of Vlisco in Central Africa” through not only the establishment of a fabric distribution company that tailors on-site, but also by organising more competitions and opportunities for young talent from Central Africa.
Woman plural and transcultural:
Using her VFF budget, on International Women’s Day, Anne Béatrice Awoundjia Bodo put together her first thematic collection ‘Woman plural and transcultural’, under her brand BB Sao fashion, named after the famous ancient cross-border civilisation between Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria. Bodo says, “the theme ‘Woman plural and transcultural’ aims to unbind the African woman from westernised models. The collection highlighted the natural beauty of the African woman through all her anatomical expressions: from the generous silhouette of Venus Hottentot to the bronzed Sudano-Sahelian dandies, and from the smaller pygmies of the equatorial forests to the clear complexions of Africans with albinism.” Experimenting with a broad visual spectrum, this BB Sao collection is “inter-communicable with installation sculpture and painting.” Thus, after the realisation of the clothes, fabrics were given to a selected team of visual arts students who created accompanying paintings and conceptual sculptures.
Work now!
When speaking with young students, “I advise them to work on their project now, because the competition is tough, mobilising hundreds of applications around the world. Also, it is not enough to be technically gifted, but also to know how to give a conceptual content to one’s garment, to the point of making it a true work of art, at the same time as a product of social communication.”