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Final Preparations For Niger Fashion Show Amid Protests
by Dominique Ageorges
NIAMEY (AFP) - Models and fashion designers were busy here Saturday with final preparations for a glittering fashion festival that has been preceded by violent protests from Muslim groups calling the show satanic.
Inside Niamey's Sofitel hotel, trunks of designs were still arriving as models paraded in vibrant outfits or waited patiently to be called over the loudspeaker system as fashion designers supervised first fittings.
The show, which was officially opened Friday, is the International Festival of African Fashion (FIMA). It brings together African designers of renown from France and other countries.
The highlight of the show was to be a parade on Saturday evening at a specially prepared site on the bank of the River Niger, south of the capital.
Islamic groups opposed to the holding of the show - they say it will cause debauchery and incite behavior that could bring AIDS to Niger - clashed violently Wednesday and Thursday with police, with at least three people seriously injured.
But as the security forces Friday turned out in force to prevent a repetition of the violence, inside the hotel, fashion designers and models had little time for the protests.
Models from Senegal and Ivory Coast said they found the demonstrations "ridiculous."
"We are here for peace, so that African development moves forward and to celebrate our reunion," said one.
They agreed however "you shouldn't go out [dressed] like that, half-naked."
Oumou Sy is a young Senegalese fashion designer. Back in her own country, she directs a fashion house of 25 people and has organized her own fashion festival for the last five years running. She said there was no way she was not coming to the show.
Her designs are proudly African - she takes her inspiration from sources as diverse as the baobab and women in rice fields.
Sy says she is not worried at having her designs paraded next to those of one of the most prestigious names in the fashion industry, Yves Saint Laurent.
"It's natural to have a show with him. He is a designer, so am I. We are on the same ground and we share the same ideas."
It was during one of Sy's fashion workshops that 25-year-old Canadian Anne Pilote met the Niger-based, Paris-born designer Alphadi, the man behind the festival.
Pilote, whose designs are resolutely multi-ethnic in inspiration, a flamboyant mix of textures and fabrics, says she is happy to be here.
"I came despite everything, despite past events, because I have confidence in the FIMA team who are working for Niger's development," Pilote told AFP.
A local taxi-driver agrees.
"It's good for us that everyone is coming to Niger." He says that the Muslim faith "has never been against that kind of event."
He blames people from neighboring Nigeria for stirring up the protests.
After two days of protests in which truncheon-wielding police launched tear-gas grenades at crowds, there were no reports of incidents Friday, the Muslim day of prayer.
Muslim leaders had said they might not be able to control some of their youths after the prayers.
There were no police to be seen along the 15-kilometer (10 mile) stretch of road leading to the hall where the fashion show is due to take place.
A few soldiers were on the site of Saturday's fashion parade, but more to guard the chairs, cushions, lamps and other equipment to be used in the show.
Just beyond, a young man, his face covered with a scarf, said he was impatient for the show to start.
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