In the Spotlight: C’est Bon Redefines Streetwear
Streetwear label C’est Bon started as a passion project for designer Mamadou Bah, who learned about fashion through music and taught himself about sketching, patternmaking and screen-printing.
“I saw a space that didn’t really have designers that looked like me,” said Bah, who was born in Guinea and raised in Detroit. “I was like, OK I’m into these fashion brands, but there aren’t really Black designers that have major labels within the space, so I created that. More so, it was a passion project at the beginning just to have fun with and then it scaled into an actual business.”
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In four years, Bah has grown C’est Bon from a line of screen-printed T-shirts to a brand producing several full apparel collections a year that have been worn by NBA players such as Dwyane Wade, Josh Green, Torrey Craig and others. C’est Bon also has a robust retail presence, selling direct-to-consumer and at specialty retailers like Social Status and Fwrd and internationally at Bstn in Germany, Cntrbnd in Canada and Sneakers N Stuff in Sweden and France.
Bah describes his streetwear designs as “utilitarian and minimalistic” and said his design process starts by talking to his friends to get inspiration. His goal is to create stories around his collection, something that was prominent in his recent spring 2023 collection titled “L’Avenir of Today.”
The collection includes cargo pants, work jackets, cardigans, utility vests and accessories in a bright and earthy color palette and is meant to reflect how Bah sees the future.
“It’s the future we want to see,” he said. “Even during the pandemic, I’m really into person-to-person interactions, so the whole doing meetings on Zoom, that didn’t sit well with me. So this was creating a new world where we can see how formal blends into the future of workwear and how we want to view it.”
For the collection, Bah teamed with fine artist Lalo for custom graphics featured on the items. Bah also worked with NBA players Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Jarred Vanderbilt, Joel Ayayi and Hamidou Diallo, to model the collection for the look book, who he explained are friends of the brand.
Bah explained it’s important for him to keep things consistent and solid at this point in his business, sticking with a tight distribution list and staying within the apparel categories that have proven to perform well.
Going forward, his goal is to show collections on a more consistent basis and to get on the Paris Fashion Week calendar.
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