Diarra Bousso resigned to combine her two passions; math and design! To many, it obviously seemed odd that a successful Wall Street trader would leave the lustrous career to follow a dream but she was passion driven. In 2013, Diarra launched Dakar Boutique Group, the parent company of her new fashion labels DIARRABLU and DIARRABEL. Her business celebrates Africa, empowers its people and represents them across the world in different capacities.
When the time came, the ever-daring Diarra left her labels in the hands of talented teams between Dakar, London and New York. Diarra resigned as CEO of her businesses in 2017 to teach mathematics in Silicon Valley. Her main mission there is to explore ways to merge math and art with the hopes of improving the world’s approach to new fashion, learning and teaching. Fully focused on teaching mathematics, Diarra spends only her breaks from California at the Dakar studio to design collections.
Recently Diarra gave a lecture at Harvard Business School on how she plans to revise the mathematics of Africa in an attempt to create better fabrics in the world of new fashion. This would take developing mathematical algorithms that can generate ancient African patterns for fabric prints that can be varied in countless ways. The creative mathematician and designer achieved success with her algorithmic prints that she used in the creation of SS19 and FW19 collections. Diarra Bousso’s progressive, new fashion was featured in Elle Magazine, Vogue Magazine, The New York Times and Glamour.
Diarra Bousso is a passionate representative of her homeland, Senegal. She is a distinguished panelist at the United Nations platform for Art and Heritage and late in 2018, Diarra represented Senegal at Africa 2018. We met at the SheDesigns Expo organized for African women in design and I knew we had to work together in the world of new fashion. Her incredibly beautiful designs would work perfectly for my upcoming photo shoot. The model, my muse Shanelle Nyasiase, dressed up in some stunning DIARRABLU pieces and bestselling Adele Dejak jewellery. The results of this shoot are the pure perfection images now featured in our shopping bags launched on Valentine’s Day 2019.
