THE FACE x New Balance brought together Sainté, BU$HI, Leys and Parisian collective 99GINGER last week for Paris Fashion Week Mens.
Mixmag was there to bring a stream a from Kirou Kirou, founder of 99GINGER, the collective who have been steadily building a buzz in the French capital since 2018. These days they’re throwing parties everywhere from London to Los Angeles, joining the dots between jazz, deep house, amapiano, batida, drum’n’bass, rap and techno.
Kirou Kirou, a 29-year-old curator and creative director, founded 99GINGER with 28-year-old project manager Ava Andreani. The core crew now consists of seven members: “The team was built around energies,” Kirou told THE FACE. Although the collective’s core members have different backgrounds, with familial roots that range from Ethiopian and Brazilian to Cambodian and Algerian, they all speak “the same cultural language.”
Some Parisians still don’t get it. Local media and promoters have reduced 99GINGER erroneously to “the afrobeat collective” (which “doesn’t mean anything,” says Kirou), even though its members also play a wide range of music. But the crew has carved out a niche that’s made an impact on the wider Paris scene. “We have our community that understands us,” Kirou says. Today, there’s a growing French scene that is “more colourful, more métissé [mixed].”
