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From apprentice to fashion icon: Ivory Coast’s Pathe’O, 50 years on

From apprentice to fashion icon: Ivory Coast’s Pathe’O, 50 years on

LOUCOUMANE COULIBALY WHEN 20-year-old Pathe Ouedraogo left his Burkina Faso village in 1969 in search of a better life in neighbouring Ivory Coast, his dream was to return with a bicycle and a transistor radio to prove he had made it. He was too thin to work on a cocoa farm, so took the chance to learn how to make clothes instead - a decision that propelled him to fashion stardom. "The most accessible job at the time was to be an apprentice tailor," said Ouedraogo. The man mostly known as Pathe'O is now celebrating a 50-year career during which…
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