French Top Model Kataoucha who was born in Guinea in 1960 died recently.
Her body was found floating in the Seine, near the Pont Alexandre III bridge, after nearly a month of missing. The initial autopsy shows that there are no signs of foul play, and the police are still investigating her death as a possible homocide. She was last seen going home from a party.
Kataoucha Naiane, known as simply Kataoucha left her mark in 1980s fashion, modeling for French designers Thierry Mugler, Christian Lacroix and Spanish designer Paco Rabanne. Kataoucha was one of the first models of African decent to acheive superstadom on the catwalks of Parisian fashion.
At the height of her career she became Yves Saint Laurent’s muse. The pair remained close to her death.
Katoucha retired from modeling in 1994 to concentrate her efforts solely to activism, and to start her own line. Her Fall/Summer 1994/1995 line caught the attention of her contemporaries including, Cher, Christy Turlington and Richard Berry at Paris Fashion Week.
As a child she was a victim of female circumcision and the experience left a paiful impression on her, physically and emotionally. In her book, Dans ma chair (In My Flesh) published in 2007, Katoucha recounts the experience:
“I grew up surrounded by hibiscus and ylang-ylang flowers. I used to get drunk on the richest perfumes and saw myself as a perfumer or a model.
“But one day, mother said we were going to the cinema. And I found myself the victim of a horror movie. An unimaginable trauma that I had never managed to talk about, until I found love and wrote ‘In My flesh’.
“I embodied the most arrogant and admired kind of femininity, I who was supposed to be diminished,”
Kataoucha just finished filming a movie, untitiled as of yet which is scheduled to be released in 2008.
Source: MSNBC, Telegraph
