The Jordon – Opium Paris campaign shakes up fashion as well as notions of culture
The Jordan Campaign by Opium Paris, with its heavy emphasis on heritage, spans several divides across sport, music, movement and above all culture. Yasmine Rugarli discusses the new cultural grammar in fashion and the emergence of an African ‘third culture’ with Madior Ndiaye, the creative directors of the campaign.
The joint campaign by sportswear, shoes and accessories producer Nike, marketed under the Jordan Brand and perfumer Opium under the title Commitment Beyond Court, celebrating unseen discipline, sacrifice, and the dedication behind creative success, has made a big impact in France.
The campaign is narrated through intimate photography and three short films titled Roots, Craft, and Rhythm and stars three Parisian creatives showcasing the intersection of sport, music, and movement:
The partnership ties into Opium Paris’s roots (founded by Yace and Mounir), celebrating the French-Moroccan diaspora, multiculturalism of ‘Grand Paris’, and community-driven streetwear culture.
It is photographed and directed by Moïse Luzolo, with artistic direction by Madior Ndiaye and creative direction by Nasndassi.
Part of a three-episode series, Roots is conceived as an ode to personal roots, homeland, women’s agency, and sacred ritual; the campaign moves beyond a single story of African identity, instead creating a more plural and intimate narrative of belonging.
Madior Ndiaye is a young Franco-Senegalese artistic director working with Opium Paris. The campaign unfolds through his vision of telling “stories that matter.”
It becomes more than a commercial image-making exercise, but rather a form of transmitting cultural knowledge through contemporary visual language.
At the centre of this process is what Madior describes as the emergence of a “third culture”: a space where different cultural references, geographies, generations, and lived experiences intersect, overlap, and ultimately produce something new.
Madior’s creative philosophy has been shaped not only by his multicultural background, but also by a professional trajectory that has allowed him to experience the creative and fashion industries from very different vantage points.
His journey started in a fairly traditional way. He completed a degree at business school while working as a model to finance his studies. From there, he went on to work for Nike, before eventually becoming a freelancer and beginning to collaborate with Opium Paris, which was founded by Franco-Moroccan entrepreneurs.
His work with Opium Paris gradually evolved into a long-term creative relationship, with Madior becoming Creative Director.
One of Madior’s slogans is The Clear Vision, which refers to his mission to place those directly concerned by a story at the centre of its narrative.
“The equation that has guided my work from the beginning is the combination of branding, cultural knowledge and understanding, and my own creativity.
It has allowed me to become a bridge between a brand’s vision and the reality of the people it wants to connect with.
“I am immersed in this culture, and I am an actor within it —I go out, I meet people, I experience the energy of the city of Paris—and this proximity allows me to create campaigns that feel authentic and meaningful for both the brand and its audience.”
His creative philosophy is deeply inspired by the concept of the Middle Ground—an idea that emerged in the UK in the aftermath of industrial decline, referring to abandoned spaces that were reclaimed, transformed, and given a new purpose.
Over time, the concept has evolved beyond physical spaces to describe environments that create connections between different worlds, where new ideas, cultures, and forms of innovation can emerge.
The Middle Ground sits between the upper ground—established institutions, governments, and global brands—and the underground, where young artists, cultural innovators, and technological pioneers experiment and create new forms of expression.
It is within this space that Madior situates his own practice. As he explains: “I applied this concept to the fashion campaigns I was working on by asking myself a simple question: does a middle ground exist within the world of fashion branding? That question has guided my work ever since.
“I have experience working within the corporate world, alongside major brands, so I understand their challenges, their budgets, their ways of operating, and their language. At the same time, I am deeply connected to Paris’ creative and artistic youth culture. This allows me to speak to both worlds and create a bridge between them.
“Everything I create begins with cultural insights. I start by observing which cultural elements resonate with me and identifying the ones that will serve as the foundation for the campaign. Only afterwards do I develop the moodboard and imagine the visuals. Without understanding the cultural foundation, I cannot create meaning.”
Layers of Afro-centric culture
At the centre of the campaign is Poupie, originally from Mali, a female former professional basketball player and co-founder of @icanplay. In the visuals, she is dribbling while four women —Hélène, Brigitte, Annie, and Mame Bousso — braid her loose hair.
The image immediately evokes layers of Afro-centric cultural experience: the intimate act of braiding becomes an umbilical cord of identity, connecting the athlete’s public persona to ritual, ancestral continuity, and embodied knowledge that precedes recognition and success.
This visual sits within the notion of Shadow Work: the doubt, insecurity, fear of failure, and introspection that quietly shape who we become but often remain invisible. Shadow Work precedes the image and gives it meaning, rather than being a creative device conceived specifically for the campaign.
From this emerges the campaign’s creative concept, “Commitment Beyond Court”—a reflection on who we are beyond performance, and more specifically, on the cultural and heritage that forms the backbone of the athlete’s success.
“This is where I connect the concept to cultural insights. I work through a funnel process: shadow work can mean many things, but I chose to approach it through an Afro-diasporic cultural lens, focusing on an interpretation that genuinely speaks to me,” says Madior.
This is metaphorically embodied in the campaign’s visual language, where elements that would rarely coexist in the same time or place are brought together within a single frame. Madior explains:
“When you train in basketball, you are not simultaneously getting your hair braided. These are two completely separate moments. Hair braiding is an intimate moment of sharing with the women in your family—spiritual—and one that participates in the construction of your identity.
“The court, by contrast, is a space of focus and performance, but also of self-expression. Bringing these two worlds together, the message is: if I perform on the court, it is also because I am deeply rooted in my identity and my culture.”
Poupie is portrayed as an athlete whose strength and success are deeply grounded in her heritage. The hours spent being braided, feeling beautiful, and surrounded by women become part of the unseen backbone behind her performance on the court.
The women braiding Poupie’s hair—the tantines, a French term for older women or auntie figures—wear artisanal traditional bazin garments which were directly made in Mali through a handmade tie-dye process.
However, if you notice, at their feet are Jordans.
The juxtaposition is striking precisely because it feels so natural: they remain grounded in their role within African womanhood while simultaneously being portrayed as part of the present—stylish, contemporary, and reflective of the emerging culture that is increasingly shaping African and diasporic identities.
The fact that they wear the same sneakers as the basketball player also carries a quiet message of solidarity: “we are here with you.” In doing so, the image communicates something about the product itself—the sneaker is a shared object, accessible across generations.
When Madior expressed what this image symbolically represented for him, he pointed back to the women themselves:
“I was joking with them, saying: ‘Now your children won’t be able to tell you anything anymore. You have Nike—you’re more stylish than them!’ And they would answer: ‘But Madior, you know we are grandmothers!’
“So, on set, I started calling them the ‘Star Grandmothers’.’ Little by little, they started saying that they also had the right to wear Jordans. In the end, they were the ones who gave us the different keys to interpreting this image.”
Long creative lineage
This way of bringing African cultural references into contemporary fashion is also part of a longer creative lineage.
Madior points to Youssouf Fofana, founder of Maison Château Rouge, as one of the figures who helped shape his vision. He recalls Fofana’s 2019 collaboration with Jordan, which brought African cultural references and the lived reality of Paris’s Château Rouge into the language of the Air Jordan 1. The campaign’s accompanying imagery featured aunties dressed in traditional boubous and paired with Jordans.
“I am also a child of people like Youssouf Fofana, who showed us that we can tell our stories in our own way. It is because people like him opened certain doors that today we can, in turn, tell these stories according to our own codes and our own perspective.
“My goal is to be able to do the same for the generations that will come after us. People who can understand this language are all heirs to these transformations.”
Other layers of symbolism and cultural references emerge through the campaign’s sonic language. The soundtrack builds from a sample featuring Salaman, Toumani Diabaté, and Ballaké Sissoko, allowing the soft, hypnotic sound of the kora to pay homage to its West African origins, with the voices of the tanties, recorded directly on set, incorporated on top.
As Madior explains.
The Making of a Third Culture: “The intention was to create a sound atmosphere that invites introspection—something almost floating, but also deeply metaphorical
The campaign’s resonance across continents points to something larger than representation. It reveals the crystallisation of what Madior calls a “third culture”—a space where references travel, collide, and become something new. African heritage, European urban culture, American basketball, fashion, music, and diasporic experiences converge to create a visual language that feels familiar across geographies.
“If you think about it, basketball is, originally, an American sport. Of course, it is now played all over the world, but historically and culturally, it was born in the United States.
“Yet, a young person playing basketball in Mali can recognise themselves in this representation. On the other hand, an American basketball player might not necessarily identify with it in the same way.
“This is precisely what I mean when I talk about the third culture. This is why I say that, through this mix of cultures, elements, and references, we are creating a third culture. It is a hybrid culture. And I am part of this mixing and of this phenomenon.”
Madior sees this as part of a broader shift in the relationship between Africa and Europe.
“In Europe, we have gradually developed the humility to recognise that our brothers and sisters on the continent also have many things to teach us and things to share with us.
“And on the African continent, many young people have freed themselves from a certain complex that was historically created. They are saying: ‘We also have our place in this space, and we can co-create with them.
Before, there was a certain shame associated with returning to the country, while on the other side there were also many prejudices.
“But these barriers are gradually disappearing. The connection between children of the diaspora and young people on the continent is essential to make our stories and our cultures shine.”
Who stands behind the camera?
For decades, African cultural reference in media and communication has been shaped by what some have described as a “franchising approach”—a model through which dominant media and cultural industries incorporate African symbols, aesthetics, and narratives without necessarily questioning who has the authority to define their meaning.
What is emerging among a growing generation of African and diasporic creatives signals a shift in creative agency. Madior explains, “Every detail is a form of representation. The aunties, I represent them as they are in their everyday lives.
“We are not asking them to play absurd roles or removing them artificially from their own world. It is precisely this way that makes the campaign authentic and allows us to change narratives.
“In this campaign, the traditional dresses were produced and designed in Mali. The stylist is Black, the set designer is Black, the photographer is Black, and the director is Black and originally from the Congo”
This is not simply about incorporating African symbols into existing frameworks, but about moving beyond the language of “inclusivity” to question who holds the power to define narratives, who gets to shape the questions being asked, and whose ways of knowing are recognised as legitimate forms of knowledge.
