Nakuru · Rift Valley · Kenya
A cloth that has always been worn
Handwoven shukas, chosen one at a time in the Kenyan highlands and sent tracked to your door.
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Handwoven shukas, chosen one at a time in the Kenyan highlands and sent tracked to your door.
Every shuka is a full-size cloth, roughly 150 by 200 centimetres. There is no size to guess at — it is worn wrapped, thrown over a shoulder, laid across a bed or a chair. What differs is the weave and what the colours carry.
We buy them in Kenya, check each one by hand, and photograph the cloth you will actually receive.
It keeps the cold out at 1,750 metres. It also looks right over the back of a chair in London. Both of those things have always been true of this cloth — we are not reinventing it, only carrying it further.
About the clothIn Maasai tradition colour is not decoration. People choose accordingly, and it costs you nothing to know what you are wearing.
Bravery, unity and blood. The colour most tied to Maasai identity, and the one worn by warriors.
Energy and the sky — and with it the rain that keeps people and cattle alive.
Sacred. Associated with protection, and worn at moments of passage.
The sun, and hospitality — the calabash offered to a guest who arrives.
Look closely and the weave is slightly irregular — threads sit a fraction apart, the check wanders by a millimetre. That is the evidence of a person at a loom rather than a machine, and it is the reason the cloth softens with use instead of wearing out.
Posted within two working days of payment clearing. Tracking number the same day.
Kenyan cloth enters the UK and EU duty-free. Import VAT may still apply — we say so up front.
M‑Pesa at home. Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay everywhere else.
Unused and unwashed. Return postage is yours, and it is slow from Kenya — worth knowing first.
