Africa Frist

Since we founded mille collines in spring of 2009 in Kigali we have always followed a strong vision: Africa first. 

At very early stages of the project we decided that we wanted to bet for the African continent not only to establish and produce a luxury African fashion brand but also to distribute it. Thats how we opened in the summer of 2010 our first stand alone store in the city of Nairobi. Today, we have 5. 

Very often, we are asked about our expansion to other international markets. There is a big urge in the mentality of the people in the industry in Africa to take their talent, brands and projects outside of the continent, as if staying here made them invisible. At mille collines we believe that staying inside makes us more interesting and give us time to grow our companies in a pace that is aligned with our operational model. 

We have always defended that an African brand must root itself; connect the creation of the products to the consumers in its regions. Africa is becoming a sophisticated market where local luxury brands have a great opportunity to thrive and expand. 

What helps new companies succeed is the ability to stay focused. International markets are huge, highly saturated and very complex operationally for a young and new company. 

In an exciting move, we have been invited next week to attend the Retail Congress of Africa in Johannesburg with speakers that go from the expansion general manager of Mango to the Director of integrated retail of Walt Disney. 

Why should we move out when the world is starting to move in? 

AFRICA FIRST. 

a beautiful collaboration

This season we were excited to have the opportunity to collaborate with artist Naomi Van Rampelberg. Naomi is known for her fine, incredibly detailed work that she applies to glass as well as paper collage. For the first time ever she hand painted on fabric for our Tuareg inspired 2013 collection. Our glass jewelry was hand painted by the artist as well.

Check out more of her work on her facebook page. We're excited for Naomi as she exhibiting her collection at at Hangar311 Gallery in Mechelen, Belgium www.hangar311.be

Solar energy in our workshop

Power outages are a common occurrence in Rwanda, but we've found a green solution to help us out. Solar lamps! The sun is not a scarce resource here in Rwanda. The team can charge their lamps while using them at their machines.

 Sun Kings charging in the bright sun, while our tailor uses it at his table. Efficient.

Shedding some light on our tailors as they sew our Isaro Tank Top.

Some tailors get more creative than others with how they mount their lamps.

there is something about Nairobi

There is something about Nairobi. Every time I set foot in the airport, I remember that summer of 2010, when Marc was building our very first mille collines store. There are so many emotional memories attached to those days when we were creating the very first one, the store that would give us green light to keep on breathing. I remember vividly Marc drawing for the first time a wooden table with 98 pieces that created a perfect puzzle. Or him phoning me from Nairobi to explain me how the electrician wanted to install speaker cables in our shop for the lighting. The tented camp he stayed in during the construction months; sometimes tented, sometimes a shared room, sometimes a dark old humid room. He asked for nothing more, asked for nothing less. I can still remember the blue Bata flip flops he wore during Kenyan winter four sizes smaller. With that will and that passion is how we made our first mille collines store happen.

There is something about Nairobi now, the home that Marc imagined and created through a lack of one during two years has turned out to be a magic place today. A place that is full of light, of fresh and new Africa, of optimistic surprise messages in places you would never expect them, of memories of a life we are leaving behind and expectations of a year we want to move forward faster than slower, bigger than smaller.

The apartment, home to co founder and brand is located in Parklands in a very peaceful street full of bushed that are perfectly shaped to the eye. This weekend we walked to Westlands to have breakfast and the following days have been a constant race of meetings after meetings.

There is something about Nairobi today, we have two stores and one that is on its way. Expectations are high and many times scary. Today was scary. However, in the peace of that house Marc imagined and customized to be, wrapped in a new blue striped blanket recently purchased to add a touch of color to the leather coach, cuddled by the glance of three beautiful people photographed in black and white on the wall above us there is nothing that can actually go wrong. We have built a brand that is so full of us, of the story of two young naïve and brave people and the beauty of a continent that will only open more to the world year after year.  

On a plane now back to my Kigali home. There will always be something about Nairobi.

Thank you Marc for always wrapping up my fears. For your determination and unconditional faith in mille collines.   

Business romance

When you start a love story, everything smells like roses and tastes like fun. We fell in love with our business 4 years ago. That was the start of what would soon become a long lasting romance. We were so madly and crazy in love that we moved into a multi flawed apartment of 30m2 and saw in it only charms. No running water, rat parties at night in the garbage corner, and electricity cuts every evening. We prepared dinner on an electric cooker that would always stop 3min after we threw spaghettis. Oh yes, we were so in love that eating raw pasta was the best spaghetti “al dente” ever cooked. Yes, falling in love can be hard to remember.

 At some point that perfect pasta will starts tasting like raw uneatable spaghettis. That is when you have to face one of the hardest truths of love. No, you had not found perfection, you were blind to imperfection.  How do you keep on going after reality smashes you in the face like that? If you are lucky, already at that point you will be looking forward to a wide collection of dreams that feel beautiful and ambitious. Looking back won’t be painful but a sweet nostalgic memory.

Very often, we like to remember that flawed apartment in the middle of Kigali, we have a sharp memory of its smell, the sun coming in through the windows of a third floor and the bathroom painted half pink because we had no more paint left. Luckily, your brain tends to remember more vividly the good things so that you can keep moving when the bad ones come. Just like a love story, you wake up every morning to fight for something you believe in. Somehow, you will always manage to find new “al dente” pastas to fall in love with. 

Gatete, in love with leather.

Meet Gatete, our leather worker. He hand makes all our leather products.

The process is lengthy and time consuming, but the result is a quality bag that shows the beauty of what 'hand made' really means.

Meet our Akagera handbag.

New shop window: making off.

Books by hand

What do we do at mille collines when the power goes out?
make books by hand.

Very soon available in our stores.

The dyeing experience.

For our most recent runway collection we gave traditional kitengue fabric a new look by dyeing it dark muted colors. It was a successful endeavor, but as will all new collections, you then have the challenge of replicating these new ideas in order to get the product to stores.

This challenge led to a fun and tiring afternoon.

First step: organize and cut all the fabric to be dyed - no pot is big enough to hold all the fabric we needed to dye!

Step two: boil and stir. This left us all hot and thirsty, the fabric needs to boil for 20 minutes while you stir continuously, then lifting wet, steaming hot fabric out of the pots is no easy task.

Step Three: Get your buckets ready! Rinse rinse rinse until all the water runs clear. You need strong arms to twists out all the water.

Step Four: Hang the fabric to dry.

Final Step: Enjoy and big, cool glass of water, because you're finished!!

It was a successful day, and now we're ready to get the runway collection into stores!

mille collines men!

In many occasions, we have heard our friends say “you can never know when co founders of mille collines will be travelling out and when exactly they will be back”. Yes. It’s been 3 years of roller coaster work and schizophrenic rhythms. 

Co founder Marc had to move back to Spain for 3 months in September. There he would develop his final career thesis. We lost him in the field in Africa but we never lost him in the team. He decided to take his break as an opportunity to develop the menswear line. And that’s how we made our friends happy again. Not knowing exactly when Marc would be back but at least excited to hear that the so claimed line for males would finally be out there!

And that was the start of many months of online brainstorming and pinterest evening that would last forever. 

We have the privilege to work once again with Ines Monge, one of the most talented pattern makers in Spain, she has been collaborating with mille collines since 3 years now. She is part of the soul of this project and has shared the knowledge and professionalism of her team with us. Together with Marc they are creating the first prototypes of the collection that will then be shared with our team in Rwanda. They will be trained on how to create a menswear product for the first time.

There’s more exciting news. Our first men store will be opening in early 2013! Watch out. 

a wish come true: Online store open!

Drinking up for Christmas decorations

There is something very magic about Christmas. The people want to look beautiful, the streets are dressed up, the stores are glowing under the dark nights of winter.
MC stores are dressing up for Christmas too. We have asked our friends to drink up wine so that we can create a beautiful and unique shop window display.
The magic has just began!

Heart beats.

Africa is not a country but let’s face it, the world generalizes. I’ve been living in this continent for four years now and at some point so many contradictions grow in you about this fascinating place that seeing scary and unsexy published day after day in the news makes you very angry. The Africa I’ve met has more successful stories than defeats. After these years I have transformed into this shiny knight errant that is determined to show my world another reality. I insist, this is a land of contradictions and realities are many.

“I live in Africa” I often say when people ask. And then I will always get back from them a puzzled face and a look that can only mean “are you nuts?”. You can’t blame them. They just saw /war - poverty – skinny kid - malaria – help/ in a flash. That would definitely freak you out too! And then you just make it better. “Yes, I work here” and then what they see is /sacrifice – good heart – aid – humanitarian work/. But here is another truth about my reality. This is a cool place. We run a sexy company with a team full of sexy people. 3 years ago we founded a high end fashion company in Rwanda. We did that because we saw another edge to the work that can be done here, the edge where trade is an option and this place the best opportunity to do that.

It’s not all roses and fun. Those who take this step and find the strength to move away from family and friends are also moving away from their hope “when are you coming back” into their acceptance “when are you leaving”. Those who take this step are not brave because of the war, the malaria and the misery everybody thinks they will face. They are brave because they will leave behind a world that thinks that the earth’s heart beats faster and stronger back home. That will be the start of a journey full of exciting contradictions.

* this post is dedicated to all those shiny knights that have discovered other realities in this continent and like us are determined to change the way the world thinks the heart beats in Africa.

Antoinette: fighting ignorance since 1998

Today we are celebrating the International Women's Day.

millecollines team would like to dedicate this day to the women that inspired this project; Antoinette Mukakalisa.

BRIEF HISTORY OF ANTOINETTE

At the age of 16 she entered a convent in Kibungo, she was determined to fight to have access to a secondary education - inaccessible for the Tutsi ethnic group at that

moment (1969). She received training as a nun and attended sewing classes. At the age of 18 she left Rwanda and moved to Zaire, Kikur, the situation in her native country started to be difficult. She stayed in Zaire until the end of the genocide. When the situation in Rwanda stabilized she decided to return to her motherland and look for her family. Most of them were dead. It is then that she realizes the dimensions of the problems Rwanda had and would face. She starts working on possible solutions. A few years later Tujijurane is born.

“I fought hard to receive a proper education when I was young; I never accepted that Tutsi could not be educated in the same way as any other ethnic group. I worked very hard to become a professional dressmaker. I opened several workshops which I managed myself while I raised my children showing them that discipline with a lot of love is the only path. I stressed in the importance of education to be professional in a fast changing world. With my two children successfully working and an intense life behind of which I feel proud, I am ready to help others.

- Antoinette Mukakalisa

(words she shared with us while sitting in her living room in 2006, mille collines brand was just born.)

Her new life project was founding an association in 1998 that she named Tujijurane, which in the local language means; from hand to hand. It took off with a group of 20 women. By November 2006 the group had grown to 140 members. Antoinette is still today the president.

TUJIJURANE'S PHILOSOPHY

Tujijurane works in one of the poorest districts of Kigali, Kacyru-Kibaza. The aim is to offer quality training free or at the same price as public education.

The

women of the comm

unity were the first one to be

favoured

. Women that dreamed of having a job from

which they could make a living.

Starting by training the women lead to a clear need to open a nursery for their children's education, which were now alone at home since their mums had started working. That’s how Tujijurane’s nursery was born.

Tujijurane is today not only an association for women but an association training any poor person willing to fight ignorance.

Tujijurane has crossed Kigali’s borders, today they have some members that walk in every day from villages locared on the outskirts.

Each member contributes with

500 francs (1 dollar) each m

onth that goes to the association. Every Friday an assembly takes place where the work of all the week is registered, the expenses are updated and other maters are debated.

Africa Digna Foundation is collaborating with Tujijurane in supporting new projects the association is carrying out. If you would like to support Antoinette in her fight, please contact Africa Digna.

info@africadigna.org

2005. The moment co founder Inés met Antoinette in her first trip to Rwanda.

2006. Marc and Inés were founding mille collines project with the essential collaboration of Antoinette in the setup.

Mafia island, a virgin paradise. (Part I)

"the virgin island; where the trees, the fish and the people can go wild."

Location: Mafia Island, Tanzania

Date: august 2010

By: MC press