One evening, between two lines of code and a box of fabric, Kamila was born. I was still finishing a network project for my job as a telecom engineer, my mind full of diagrams and deadlines, when I finally opened that wax print I had been saving for weeks: golden flowers on a red and burgundy background, a pattern that called for something strong. I knew, even without having sketched it, that this fabric did not want to become just any piece.
I started with the top, thinking kimono: wide sleeves, a straight and generous cut that lets the body breathe, that Japanese elegance that never seeks to constrict but to wrap. Then I placed the wax print next to a burgundy satin and I knew the rest would be a pleated skirt, with that drape that moves with every step. Two sewing vocabularies that, on paper, had no reason to talk to each other — and which, once assembled, began to tell exactly the story I have carried within myself all along.
Kamila took shape over several weeks, always in the evening, after days spent behind a screen thinking about fiber optics and network architecture. There is something I deeply love about this shift: the precision of an engineer becoming the patience of a seamstress, the same attention to detail applied to an entirely different language. Hand-sewing the sleeve finishes after a day of meetings is my way of coming back to myself.
What touches me most about this piece is that it doesn't choose between Japan and West Africa. It makes no compromises, it dilutes nothing: it wears both in their entirety, one in the sleeves, the other in the skirt, and the result is uniquely its own. This is exactly what I try to do with every custom order — to never choose a single heritage when you can wear several at once, proudly.
Kamila is now one of the creations I am most proud of, and yet it started like many of my pieces: a fabric lying in a corner of the studio, an intuition, and an evening when I finally took the time to listen to it. If you, too, have a fabric that has been waiting for you for too long, or an idea for a piece that blends two worlds that inhabit you, let's talk about it: it is exactly this kind of story that I love to sew.
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