Prometheus 6   

A Hip-Hop Fashion Bridge Across the Atlantic
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

BOBIGNY, France — Mohamed Dia still remembers his first pair of Nikes: a "Dallas" model in gray with the Nike curve in white.

Mr. Dia, now a 29-year-old businessman and fashion designer, was 12 years old and living with his four brothers in a foster home not far from his mother's apartment in Sarcelles, a rough Paris suburb.

"It was a group home for kids whose parents couldn't take care of them," Mr. Dia recalled in an interview in a warehouse he uses in Bobigny, a Paris suburb. "I was rather pathetic. I dressed in used clothes that people donated at Christmas. I had no idea about clothes, but I knew I had to have Nikes."

It took three months of savings — and a hefty contribution from his mother — to buy the $160 pair of shoes.

Now Mr. Dia wears his own brand of clothing, which is sold in four Dia stores in France and is carried in 700 others. Sales are projected at $19 million to $22 million this year, up from $13 million in 2002. He drives a black Mercedes and has bought an apartment in Paris for his mother.

In an effort to break into the American market, Mr. Dia is negotiating to open a store on 125th Street in Harlem with a special line for the United States. He will open the shop with Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born hip-hop singer and composer.