Casablanca was founded by Charaf Tajer in 2018 as a menswear label fusing plush visuals with Moroccan-Parisian sensibilities. The company has since been in expansion mode, and, for the first time this season, is showing its collection on the Paris Fashion Week women’s wear calendar.
“It’s something we had wanted to do for a long time”, says Tajer over a Zoom call a few days before his catwalk. “It came very naturally to us. We’ve already been doing shows that are 50 percent menswear and 50 percent womenswear, so it’s the same format. We’re just now in front of a new audience.” He adds: “Men’s is about 75 percent of our business right now. So the goal is to boost the women's.”
Spring Summer 2024 is Tajer’s tribute to his “friends in Nigeria” and the modernity of Lagos, Nigeria's country’s biggest city. The collection is meant to be contemporary, appealing to Lagos’s large fashion audience, its entertainment industries and its worldly culture. Among the highlights are sunset-ombré dyed dresses and suits, and sportswear with green-and-white colour schemes reminiscent of Nigeria’s flag.
“We are focusing more on bags and shoes for the coming seasons”, says Tajer about Casablanca’s evolution as it reaches the latter half of its first decade. “And in the future, we would love to expand to cosmetics and perfume, along with other spaces, like furniture.”
The aforementioned dolce vita scenes, of which many have been depicted on jersey tees and silken shirts (one boasting a graphic of the now defunct Concorde jet), have helped to buttress the ultra-posh, in-the-know lifestyle around Casablanca. Among independent brands out there, it offers a truly distinct feeling of immersion into somewhere far away yet attainable in tandem. For Tajer, it's all about jet-setting through clothes.
“The aspect of ‘lifestyle’ for Casablanca is very important for us”, says Tajer. “It’s definitely a lifestyle brand. I think we’re so complete that people can almost smell what will one day be the Casablanca scent, or feel what will one day be a Casablanca sofa.”
