Founded in 2008 by Wacy Zacarias, Woogui offers luxury artisanal products with contemporary African traces. Curating the materials in the brand’s home country of Mozambique and working with local artisans to give back to the economy, Woogui puts an emphasis on sustainability— both with the products they create and the way they produce them.
When Zacarias first launched the brand, she realized that most of the African textiles in Mozambique were produced in India or China, and the ones that were produced on the continent were much more expensive. “I ended up figuring out that African textiles, in fact, were not really African. They were textiles that were brought to Africa via trade,” she said, speaking to Design Indaba. “Some of them were an imitation of textiles that existed in West Africa. So they were like the mass-made answer to handmade textiles.
There are some batik elements in some of them but mostly they were produced in China or actually Holland.” Determined to preserve and promote her culture, she made an effort to source within Africa as a point of national pride. Now, with textiles and prints at the core of her brand, she points out how the designs hold a particular place in Mozambique’s culture.
“There are textiles that are worn when people are born, there are textiles that are worn when people die. There are textiles only wedded women can wear in certain regions of Africa. So there’s a language almost, there’s a way of communicating through the textiles that exists in our culture. It’s still very present today.”
Content Courtesy Of Woogui , Industrie Africa & Nairobi Fashion Hub
