childrenswear · womenswear · menswear · Est. 2022
Khayasi
The Story
Khayasi began the way a lot of things begin — with a child, and a mother who wanted something beautiful for her.
When I became a mother, I went looking for kitenge pieces for my daughter and kept coming back disappointed. The fabric was everywhere. The prints were extraordinary. But so little of it was made for children in a way that felt considered — properly cut, comfortable to move in, made to be worn rather than kept for one occasion and outgrown.
So I made it myself. Then other mothers asked where it came from.
What I didn’t expect was how quickly the question changed. Mothers wanted something for themselves in the same cloth. Then fathers asked. Then whole families wanted to be dressed together — not in matching outfits exactly, but in pieces that clearly belonged to one another.
That is what Khayasi makes now: kitenge for the whole family, from the smallest person in it outward. The child is still where every piece starts.
Kitenge was never only fabric. It is what people wear to be seen — at a wedding, a naming, a homecoming, a Sunday. It carries occasion in it. What inspires Khayasi is bringing that into ordinary days, and into the wardrobes of people usually left out of it. A child’s piece should be as thoughtfully made as her mother’s. A father should have something in the same cloth. A family should be able to walk into a room and read as one.
Every piece is cut and sewn in small runs, never mass-produced. Children’s pieces are made with room to grow and finished to survive being actually worn — washed often, played in, handed down. We work with kitenge sourced [from — her suppliers], and offcuts become smaller pieces rather than waste. Making less, and making it properly, is the only way we know how to work.
The Founders
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Piece
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Founder
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Fin.
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