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VIBRANT VIBES CAMEROON - BORN DESIGNER CLAUDE KAMENI DAZZLES ON THE RED CARPET, THE BIG SCREEN —AND SOON A SHOP NEAR YOU
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he road to success for fashion designer Claude Kameni stretches from Cameroon to Maryland to Hollywood’s red T carpets—with a virtual stop-off at YouTube, where she taught herself to sew. Raised with three brothers and three sisters in the Cameroonian capital, Yaoundé, and the coastal city of Douala, Kameni, now 27, moved to the U.S. with her family when she was 8. After taking a fashion class at High Point High School in Beltsville, Md.—she gives a shout-out on her website to her teacher, Mrs. Upadhyay—she began sewing clothes for classmates using a small sewing machine, a gift from her aunt. She scoured YouTube for the finer points on how to sew a circle skirt, pencil skirt, pants, and so on.
