Nairobi, May 10 -- French luxury has long borrowed from African textiles, silhouettes, and craft traditions. But as a new generation of African designers reshapes the global industry, the debate is shifting from inspiration to authorship, influence, and who profits from fashion's most enduring aesthetic codes.

French luxury likes to tell a story about itself: born in Paris ateliers, refined through couture discipline, exported to the world as the ultimate expression of taste. But look closely at the silhouettes, textures, and visual language that have shaped French fashion over the last century, and another geography emerges. Marrakech. Dakar. Bamako. Abidjan.

The global luxury aesthetic, so often coded as European, has long been built ...