Streetwear label C’est Bon began 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 an area that didn’t really have designers that looked like me,” said Bah, who was born in Guinea and raised in Detroit. “I used to be like, OK I’m into these fashion brands, but there aren’t really Black designers which have major labels inside the space, so I created that. More so, it was a passion project initially simply to have a good time with after which it scaled into an actual business.” 

In 4 years, Bah has grown C’est Bon from a line of screen-printed T-shirts to a brand producing several full apparel collections a 12 months which were worn by NBA players resembling Dwyane Wade, Josh Green, Torrey Craig and others. C’est Bon also has a sturdy retail presence, selling direct-to-consumer and at specialty retailers like Fred Segal 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 distinguished in his recent spring 2023 collection titled “L’Avenir of Today.” 

The gathering includes cargo pants, work jackets, cardigans, utility vests and accessories in a brilliant and earthy color palette and is supposed to reflect how Bah sees the long run.

“It’s the long run we would like to see,” he said. “Even through the pandemic, I’m really into person-to-person interactions, so the entire doing meetings on Zoom, that didn’t sit well with me. So this was making a latest world where we are able to see how formal blends into the long run of workwear and the way we would like to view it.”

For the gathering, Bah teamed with high quality 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 gathering for the look book, who he explained are friends of the brand.

Bah explained it’s essential for him to maintain things consistent and solid at this point in his business, sticking with a good distribution list and staying inside the apparel categories which have proven to perform well. 

Going forward, his goal is to point out collections on a more consistent basis and to get on the Paris Fashion Week calendar.