The founders

Elpidio

Artistic director

is first and foremost a passionate artist with a tumultuous career, marked by the strength of an admirable resilience, forged by the love of creation.

While still living in Togo, the young Elpidio was raised until he was seven by his grandmother, a wax loincloth wholesaler at the Adawalto market in Lomé. These colourful fabrics with their varied ornamental motifs aroused and nourished the child’s attraction to the beauty of shapes and the joy of colours, as well as his love of clothes. As a child, his aunt remembers that with the money he sometimes received, he preferred to buy pants rather than marbles or small cars…

Ayélé, who structured the life of the young Elpidio. as a businesswoman, a Nana Benz as they are called in Lomé, who passed on to her grandson the love of fashion, of beauty. Many years later, it is in honour of his grandmother that he chooses the name of his House, Ayélé.

Thr birth of

Maison Ayélé

When he arrived in France, in the south-eastern suburbs of Paris, Elpidio developed a passion for culture, music, reading, art in short. After an exciting experience as a producer-manager in the record industry, through the cultural events he subsequently organised in various Parisian venues, and after the publication of his first novel on his own account, Elpidio pursued his dream and thus matured the idea that prefigured what “Maison Ayélé” has become today.

But the story of “Maison Ayélé” is also the story of a journey and a will to build and create. A will that has been fiercely built up over the course of life’s hazards. For he would still have to overcome some tough obstacles to see his dream emerge. At the time when his first gallery and concept-store, Brain & Love, was taking shape, Elpidio lost his father. An immense pain kept him away from the realization of his projects and passions for four long years. Four years during which he fights sadness and depression, which he finally overcomes thanks to the love of his family and a deep work of analysis. Finally regaining a taste for life, Elpidio grew out of this terrible experience, from which he drew a strong idea, shaped around his love of the arts: to create a society grouping together the arts in multiple forms, to express himself and all the joy rediscovered by the man who defines himself today as a “thief of moments” in full rebirth.

Imani

The next generation

Imani, Elpidio’s daughter, is the co-founder of the brand. Her middle name is Ayélé: a tribute, a nod to destiny, anything but a coincidence. A former top-level sportswoman who trained in Taekwondo, Imani is just as much in love with fashion as her father. Like him, she is addicted to sneakers… Among other things. But Imani also brings another perspective. Within the family business, she manages communication, public relations, but also and above all her father… Imani is also a source of inspiration for Elpidio. t is notably through her combat outfits, that in addition to the inspiration due to designers such as Yamamoto or other Japanese creators, Elpdio is oriented towards the creation of loose-fitting outfits.