T bal ic
about tribal chic
Tribe Hotel is a lifestyle property in the heart of the Diplomatic District sets itself apart with atypical angles, an unrivaled appreciation for tribal artifacts and all things creative. The hotel reflects Nairobi as the dynamic, trendy, and stylish city it is. Tribal Chic, the hotel’s annual fashion event, captures the diversity of the continent, a showcase for the talent across Africa.
This year, the showcase is celebrating sustainable fashion with a leading pool of talented local and international designers. The sustainability theme is driven by Tribe Hotel’s commitment to coexist on a single planet as one tribe, humankind. Funds raised at Tribal Chic 2023 are in support of Siafu Home.
program:
7.00 pm - 7.30 pm welcome cocktails & canapés
7:30 pm - 8:30 pm fashion show
8:30 pm - 8:50 pm intermission & canapés
8:50 pm - 10:00 pm fashion show
10:00 pm - 11:30 pm - desserts & pop-up fashion market
special thanks
master of ceremonies: Valentine Njoroge and Angela Wambui
founder: Shamim Ehsani
charity partner
Tribal Chic 2023 is supporting Siafu Home. Siafu was inspired by the Swahili word for ant. Founded by two working women from two different continents, Siafu is an ode to a woman’s ability to carry ten times her weight and work as a community - just like the ant. Siafu Home is a curated collection of beautiful and functional textile pieces hand-loomed in Kenya. Using only natural materials made by real hands, whose products bring exquisite simplicity and beauty to any space.
this year’s show will feature the following designers:
Sors Studio Wildlife Works
Studio Namnyak & African Lifestyle Hub
Seamline Atelier
Katush
Deepa Dosaja
Aulgah Nato & Poetic Trends
Vinkay
Koki Designs
Shenu Hooda & Lakira
Kikoromeo & We Are NBO
Mariam Couture
head of sales and marketing: Eva Mwangi
marketing manager: Njeri Chege
marketing executive: Shaira Meghji
digital executive: Oliver Nash
marketing assistant: Heppenstall Marieta
marketing trainees: Sarah Gachau, Eugene Munyeki
show producer: Silvia Tonui
backstage manager: Wendy Kimani
choreographer: Paynette Nyawara
official makeup partner - MAC
lead hair stylist: Corrine Muthoni
dj: Imran Mwangi
violinist: Scott Mwangi
official beverage sponsor: The Wine Box
THE DESIGNERS THE MODELS
THE GIFT BAG SPONSORS
THE TEAM AT TRIBE
SORS STUDIO
Sors Studio was founded in Tehran, Iran in 2017 by Sara Amiri, Sepideh Kaviani, and Bahareh Rahmani. Given their academic and professional background, they have an architecture-oriented approach to fashion.
Sors seeks to create clothes as spatial structures on the body through transforming two-dimensional surfaces into three-dimensional volumes. In its designs, Sors uses techniques like folding, tucking and pleating, as well as the common characteristics between architecture and fashion, such as double-skin facades and transparency. Sors’s sustainable approach in response to the environmental crisis complies with its use of geometric cuts such as stripes. This will result in using leftover fabrics and less waste.
SEAMLINE ATELIER
Seamline Atelier is a Ugandan fashion brand that deals in ready-to-wear, bespoke and avant-garde / costume outfits. Our brand is strongly built around our mission “to raise awareness towards the respect of social economical aspects of life through edu-fashion” and Vision “fashion as a voice; we re-imagine a world based on respect of human dignity and other aspects of life” where when creating designs, we base on inspirations, which help us to come up with unique and strong designs.
The brand was started in 2019 from Records Fashion School where it was given an Opportunity to showcase at the French Embassy for the Uganda-France Friendship week by the school. In 2021 we released the “BACK TO OUR ROOTS” collection which was relying on the past to save the future.
The first breakthrough design was an outfit inspired by a Rubik’s cube. The story behind it is one that is both heart-wrenching and uplifting.
The piece was first showcased at FAVT [FUTURE AFRICA VISION IN TIME] exhibition at Makerere Art gallery in September (2019). This particular piece was also showcased at the Abryanz Fashionpreneur summit in October the same year and caught the eyes of Talent Africa boss Ali Alibhai, who reached out to us.
As a fashion brand, this is as far as we have gone to educate the public on issues we feel that affect the society and we still look forward to use fashion as a voice to put a brick on making the world a better place.
STUDIO NAMNYAK & AFRICAN LIFESTYLE HUB
Studio Namnyak is a 3D design studio born from a love of pattern making and a passion for innovating new ways to develop products while reducing waste in the process. Namnyak, the designer, believes that digital fashion is the future of the industry and hence every piece in this capsule has been designed, developed, patterned, and sampled digitally. This increases efficiency while reducing material, energy and time wasted in the design process.
This capsule is created for everyday people looking for comfort and character in everyday garments. The capsule is exclusive to the African Lifestyle Hub at Village Market and Sarit stores.
DEEPA DOSAJA
Deepa Dosaja is a pioneer in premium, sustainable fashion in Africa. The Deepa Dosaja label embodies beauty with a conscience. The brand only uses natural fabrics such as silk, bamboo, organic cotton, linens, wools and is constantly looking for new innovative fabrics which have a low impact on the environment. The team at Deepa Dosaja prides themselves in ensuring the highest levels of customer service and quality consciousness.
Deepa Dosaja provides a bespoke made to measure service as well as an off the rack offering. Inspiration behind the brand’s work is drawn from nature and the abundance of colours therein as well as acceptance of an ethical obligation towards the environment. This is reflected in the brand’s designs using only natural fabrics and abstinence from using any harmful or environmentally unfriendly products. The Deepa Dosaja Boutique is a paradise of sinewy fabrics carrying a wide selection of the finest natural fabrics. Deepa Dosaja also exclusively designs its own line of luxurious stretch silk prints.
AULGAH NATO
AULGAH NATO, is a multi-award winning fashion brand, which creates womenswear, bridal and recently introduced the ready to wear collections. Nato has become one of Africa’s foremost fashion labels, constantly raising the bar with each collection, Nato is dedicated to elevating the Kenyan fashion industry through their vision of delivering the best for the woman that embraces all aspects of femininity, sophistication, and elegant ease. The spirit of the AULGAH NATO brand echoes the personal style of Aulgah’s late mother, Her worldly travels and passion for vintage has played an integral role in shaping her design style and aesthetic into what it is today. Known today for their unique creations that celebrate a woman’s curves with the aim of making her feel confident and beautiful with the tag name ‘shape of you.
Designed and inspired by the powerful and assertive woman, the NATO
WOMAN THE IT GIRL collection adds a new perspective to the glamorous yet functional look. Graceful, and Elegant. Shop the perfect dress for any occasion, from short to midi to maxi in a range of materials and prints from crepe to African, embroidered to cotton.
The influences and experiences of Katungulu Mwendwa’s upbringing primed her for a career in design. Born to a bass-playing architect and a plant-loving psychologist, she spent school holidays in her grandmother’s curio shop in Nairobi, where she first became familiar with artisan collectives like eastern Kenya’s Akamba group, suppliers of some of the store’s unique trinkets at the time.
Katush is an everyday superhero — a conscious, ethical, sustainable, and compassionate leisure lifestyle brand, made in Africa for the confident, reflective, self-aware global citizen who values quality, versatility, and sustainability in original design.
More recently, the brand was selected as one of five winners in the 2019 Lagos Fashion Week Fashion Focus program and is one of 3 Kenyan fashion businesses selected for the second cohort of the Ethical Fashion Initiative’s Designer Accelerator in 2021.
Every collection starts with that curiosity, a lens through which the continent’s rich and inspiring heritage is explored and framed.
The subject settled on is swept into Katush’s considered process, carried through as prints and design features on simple, contemporary silhouettes that embody modern ease.
A skilled community of makers brings each piece to life in Kenya, keeping traditional craftwork alive and training in any technique needed to tell a season’s story.
We choose an ethical, slow fashion practice to create a genderless, seasonless, versatile wardrobe that truly serves the wearer.
VINKAY CLOTHING
Vinkay Clothing is a Nigerian brand that promotes African culture and African aesthetics through fashion, with the act of illustrating African icons, artifact, deities on attires to showcase our rich culture to the world.
WILDLIFE WORKS
“Wildlife Works was founded with a mission to protect biodiversity, and partner with local communities.” Through fashion, our apparel brand enables us to create awareness about conservation, as well as increase income streams for people living alongside wildlife in Tsavo. Our work is focused on sustainable market-based solutions to otherwise environmentally destructive practices such as poaching & deforestation. We hope you’ll join us on our journey of conscious consumerism and help bring about meaningful change to our planet. The designer, Yugala Priti, has been working in sustainable fashion for over 20 years. Her style is inspired by a love for prints and textiles created by artisans across Africa. This inspiration is reflected in the modern silhouettes created by the Wildlife Works team today.”
A heritage brand, widely credited with transforming fashion in Kenya, and mentoring many designers and artisans over the last two decades, KikoRomeo meaning “Adam’s Apple” in Kiswahili, was founded in 1996. Transcending cultures and fashion trends, KikoRomeo puts sustainability at its core, striving to create longevity in each garment by using handmade and hand-dyed fabrics as well as hand-carved trims, sourced from the African continent. Their fabrics come mainly from natural fibres including cottons, linens and silk, as well as explorations into alternative fibres such as those derived from sisal and orange peel. KikoRomeo’s silhouettes are effortlessly elegant, with attention to detail, they are treasured as works of art by all those who wear them.
Iona McCreath was appointed Creative Director of KikoRomeo in 2018, taking over from her mother Christine-Ann McCreath who founded the brand. Having grown up as a life-long apprentice, Iona ventured into fashion quite early, starting her own brand as a subsidiary of KikoRomeo in 2013 at the age of 17. Following this she went on to study a foundation degree in Art and Fashion Design from UAL’s Central Saint Martin’s followed by pursuing a BSc in Sociology from LSE.
Iona’s approach to the brand looks into material innovation, researching and developing ways to create new textiles that are informed by our contexts. Whether be this the design that is applied to the textile, or the materials which make up the textile. In her design application under KikoRomeo, she looks to reinterpret classic KikoRomeo silhouettes with a contemporary lens.
Contact details:
Website: www.kikoromeo.com | Instagram: @kikoromeo
Buyers: kikoromeo thefashionagent.co.za |
Press: pr@kikoromeo.com
General: info@kikoromeo.com
WE ARE NBO
We Are NBO is a handmade jewellery brand based in Nairobi. Our artisans are talented and highly skilled, using heritage craft to make contemporary, covetable jewellery. They creatively upcycle their tools, using reworked water pumps as sanding benches and denim off-cuts as buffing wheels. We work with mostly recycled and upcycled tools and materials salvaged from the waste stream, such as recycled brass, wood and bone; our pieces are 24k gold plated.
We consider our pieces to be a dialogue between the artisan and our designer, Michael Nguthu, who has leveraged his experience working for international brands to create organic, felt jewellery pieces that tell a story of joy, resilience, community, and ingenuity.
Phone: +254732903906
Email: announcements.nbo@gmail.com
Website: wearenbo.com
KOKI DESIGNS
Koki Designs was founded in 2009 with the desire to honour cultural heritage, all the while encouraging sustainability in fashion. In this mindset, Kokeb Zemed Pinard welcomes you as she unveils the spectacle of her new collection, Temesgen, curated for Tribal Chic 2023 on February 4th.
The theme being Sustainable Fashion, Kokeb shines the spotlight on upcycled fabric. The fabric was meant to be shredded as part of the fast fashion massive destruction of fabrics and clothes. Here it is, reinvented and recreated.
Kokeb’s main inspiration while designing this partly black and white collection is harmony, that of nature but also that which comes from tastefully associating precious Ethiopian hand woven fabrics with upcycled material.
Orchid and insect prints, tropical colors, creme and pastel hues, the diversity showcased by Kokeb is an ode to the living world. The name of this mellifluous collection is Temesgen, which, in Amharic, expresses gratitude towards God. This collection is an hommage to one of his most beautiful creations, nature.
MARIAM COUTURE
Mariam Couture, founded in July 2019 is a sustainable fashion brand that employs and empowers both men and women. We’re deeply devoted to quality and equality –both in the products we make and the quality of life we aim to provide. We invest in, train, and educate our employees so they can earn a better living by providing decent wages benefiting the livelihoods of our employees and create a comfortable working environment at our workshop that runs on renewable energy and thrive whilst helping conscious consumers feel uplifted in high-quality, limited-edition designs that help support the livelihood of our local artisans.
Mariam Couture started off as a clothing brand suited for the Coastal market only. However, we have since adapted other cultural styles such as Western and Eastern clothing giving a full collection of designs suitable for all; by fusing modern designs to create inspired, unique pieces each that tells a story of culture.
An integral part of our design philosophy evolves around zero waste design production, where we make garments that are timeless, desirable and of high quality to last a lifetime. In our making process we use left-over pieces and dead stock fabrics as patchworks giving a second life to the fabric, sparing the remaining materials from being sent to landfills.
This sustainable practice allows us to refresh our prints often and provide our fashionconscious customers unique styles.
We design collections that are narratives of nature, culture and people through travels inspired by the charms of coastal shores that reflect the blues and sandy colours of the water and beach with bright colours; coral, and vivid greens.
Our brand vision ‘Exclusivity without Boundaries’ aligns favorably with the designs we create that are unique, seasonal, capsule collections that are timeless. Moving away from temporary trends, yet still caters for all cultures, races, religions, genders, ages, body shapes and sizes, who appreciate a luxury lifestyle with high-quality fashion and sustainable designs.
We use ethnically inspired fabrics such as hand block printed cotton, linen and silk that creates a cultural connection and evokes elegance. Most of them sourced from Europe, India and a few locally that meet our standard criteria. Then they are hand cut and stitched paying close attention to details.
SHENU HOODA
Shenu Hooda is a renowned Kenyan fashion designer, her work showcases a fusion of Middle Eastern and African designs. She has been in the industry for 15 years and has taken part in various fashion events such as Swahili Fashion Week, three consecutive fashion high teas and hosted charity events with celebrities such as Micheal Jordan’s mother. Many Kenyan celebrities such as Ian Mbugua and Lillian Muli have hosted her on their famous tv show ‘Fashion Watch’ on Citizen.
Shenu Hooda has also won multiple awards, from East FM fashion designer of the year to TAWAA awards best fashion designer. From casual to bridal, Shenu has mastered it all. Her main talent is designing custom made outfits.
Shenu has 3 stores in Kenya, one at General Mathenge, another at Two Rivers mall, and also one on Limuru road, Parklands.
AFRICAN INSPIRED JEWELRY
Women have worn beads ‘since time began in ritual and ceremonies, for beautification, healing purposes, for their happiness.’ We are passionate about beads, traditional semiprecious stones and our heritage. We, ‘LAKIRA’ want to carry on the tradition for centuries of creating jewelry from beads, stones and other ethnic African material; jewelry that accentuates your personality and heritage.
LAKIRA
MASCA R A
INFINITE L AYER S S TACK
AVAILABLE IN 2 BRUSH SIZES:
- Mega brush for instant volume on longer lashes and upper lashes.
- Micro brush for extreme precision and control on shorter lashes and lower lashes
SIMPLE BEAUTY. INCLUSIVE BEAUTY.
At biw biw we are dedicated to inclusivity and simplicity across our product portfolio and brand positioning and communication; it is at the very heart of who we are and what we do. As a brand, our connection and closeness with our consumers is imperative in building an inclusive family in which consumers are listened to and products are designed to offer simple, straightforward solutions consumers can’t easily find amongst the crowded multinational product space. We are at the forefront of hyper localized, targeted product offerings and, significantly, this is supported by communication and support for our consumers to help them make their skincare regime easier and get the best from biw biw products. We seek to build lasting relationships with our consumers and be part of their lifelong skincare and wellness journey through products and brand experience that offers the simplicity, convenience, and utility our consumers need in their busy lifestyles and, most crucially, one that is inclusive to, and designed for all ages, races and skin types/tones in our diverse consumer family.
Winfield Africa is transforming Agriculture in Kenya! Winfield have developed proven high-yielding Avocado trees for professional farmers.
Winfield’s avocado Trees have been developed for ; higher yields & disease tolerance through over 20 years of testinggiving farmers peace of mind for their investment.
Seedballs Kenya has pioneered a method of mass producing seedballs for low cost and efficient distribution of indigenous trees and grass species into areas in need of restoration in Kenya. Seedballs are inexpensive and can be easily dispersed over large areas which are often hard to reach. Our indigenous seeds, supplied and certified by the Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), are not treated or altered in any way, just coated with a protective layer of recycled charcoal dust and organic binders.
Simply put, we are giving Mother Nature a helping hand by protecting the seeds from predators and sun until the appropriate natural environmental conditions trigger germination. Direct seeding reduces transplant shock and helps the young trees grow stronger roots which in turn helps them grow into stronger trees.
Spring Valley Coffee proudly celebrates Kenya’s coffee culture and the important role our country plays in producing some of the world’s finest coffees.
We are – above all things – coffee lovers! We are passionate about the beautiful Kenyan coffee that our farmers grow and are absolutely committed to doing right by their hard work through expert roasting and perfect extraction.
We are fanatical about getting each batch of coffee roasted to perfection and every cup of coffee just right. We aren’t coffee snobs and are always happy to answer any questions you have and share our knowledge & experience.
Established in 2020, out of a frustration of overpriced and underwhelming wines available in Kenya, The Wine Box has transformed the wine culture in the country and now sells over 900 products online and in store.
As your fine wine specialists, The Wine Box is committed to hand-picking the best wines for quality and value for money and making them accessible to everyone, The Wine Box offers a click and collect service or doorstep delivery anywhere in Kenya!
