Marie-Madeleine Diouf recalls how it all started: her love affair with indigo. Growing up in Parcelles Assainies, a working-class neighborhood in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, she would gravitate to traditional dance in her after-school programs. That meant raiding her mother’s closet for vintage wraps—and thus indigo fabrics, prized in her family’s Serer culture. “I was 7, 8 years old,” Diouf says, “and ever since then, I’ve seen life in blue.”
For 15 years, Diouf worked as a medical administrator. On the side, with a cheap sewing machine, she made clothes that she took on days off to Banjul, the capital of neighboring Gambia, to sell door-to-door. Then, in 2015, she made the jump. Now, as the owner of NuNu Design by DK, she’s one of the bright stars in Dakar’s art…
