Dressing Dakar: fashion city from craftsmanship to haute couture

Jackets hang on a wall in Bada Seck's one-room studio in Dakar's Ngor arrondissement in Senegal, dresses are arranged along another . Half-made clothes lie on an idle sewing machine and sacks of fabric cover the floor.

Seck's workshop, in this former fishing village in the far west of the modest Senegalese capital but its customers come from as far away as France.

"If there is the means, I do European styles with African fabrics," he says, taking a brightly patterned suit jacket off the wall to look over it. Festivals are a particularly busy time for him. "With Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr, there is a lot of work - a lot, a lot. More than we can keep up with. Even if we work all night, until 5am. C It's hard, because everyone dresses up, and our work isn't fast."

Seck mainly creates bespoke fashion. Customers bring fabrics purchased from market stalls from tailors like him to transform into kaftans, flowing boubous and dresses, western-style suits and bomber jackets.