Bottega Veneta is partnering up with the French collective on the publication.
Please fasten your seatbelts and secure your belongings because Bottega Veneta is working with Air Afrique, a Paris-based collective on a fresh new magazine. Named after an airline that operated between 1961 and 2002 which was co-owned by Senegal, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, Congo, and Chad, the collective is seeking to revive a longstanding symbol of Pan-African dialogue and creativity.
“Air Afrique was more than an airline. It was a cultural platform,” says the collective’s co-Founder Djiby Kebe. That’s reflected in the new tome, which is inspired by the airline’s in-flight magazine Balafon as well as other 20th-century pan-African publications. Throughout its pages archival clippings and photos are interwoven with contemporary work from French, French-Caribbean, and African artists and writers in an ode to the past and present. “We want to share the Air Afrique archive and create our own archive – to capture this moment of change in Black awareness and expression,” said Kebe.
To commemorate the publication, Bottega Veneta is dropping a series of limited-edition blankets, each a unique color blocked design of wool, silver leather, and textured fabrics from their archives. The pieces were dreamt up by Franco-Sudanese designer Abdel El Tayeb who drew inspiration from the bold patterns of the traditional toub dress his mother wore.
The magazine is not Bottega Veneta’s first venture into print media as it follows their last foray into reviving the legendary BUTT magazine last year. The aim of these projects are to revive and create small scale publications that give voice to dialogue and creativity not typically heard within mainstream media.
Check out Air Afrique, published in French and English, in select bookstores worldwide today.
