A Visit to Portugal: Expanding Koy Knitwear
Last year, we introduced knitwear to the Koy collection for the very first time. We hoped people would like it. We didn't expect the response we got. So we're expanding it - and a few...
The Story Behind Our Kenyan Kikoy Fabric
Every Koy garment carries a small piece of Kenya - a strip of hand-woven Kikoy fabric, worked into a collar, a cuff, a lining. It's easy to walk past on the rail. It's harder to overlook once you know how it's made.
A birthday gift that became a business
The idea for Koy began with a birthday present. For Jimmy's 21st, his brother Alastair gave him a jacket, cut from Kikoy fabric sourced in the markets of Nairobi and tailored by a craftsman named Charles. It wasn't meant to start a company. But the two brothers kept thinking about that jacket - the colour, the weight of the cloth, the story stitched into it - long after the birthday had passed. In 2017, an investment from a London hedge fund gave them the means to find out whether other people might feel the same way. Koy Clothing has been built on that instinct ever since.
Rose and the weavers of Nairobi
The Kikoy fabric used in every Koy piece is still hand-woven in Nairobi, much as it always has been. A significant part of it comes from a team of ten artisans led by a woman named Rose, who took up weaving after retirement as a way to support her family. For the smaller, more intricate custom designs, the work goes to Weavers Worth, where fabric is made to order - slowly, and only in the quantities the loom and the yarn allow, which can mean waiting one to three months for a run.
A detail, not a costume
To be clear: it's the Kikoy fabric that's made in Kenya - not the garments themselves. Every Koy piece is cut and sewn by specialist manufacturers and tailors in Turkey, Morocco and Portugal, using premium fabrics sourced from some of Europe's finest mills. The Kikoy is added by hand during the stitching process, as a small, deliberate signature - a detail, never the whole story. That balance is what the brand means by British design first, with Kenyan character running through it.
It's also why 20% of Koy's profits go back to conservation and community projects in Kenya. The Kikoy isn't a decoration borrowed from somewhere else, it's where the business started.
Next time you notice the Kikoy trim on a Koy shirt, jumper, jacket, coat or blazer, you're looking at the work of Rose's hands, or one of the ten weavers alongside her in Nairobi - the same craft that started with one jacket, one birthday, a long time ago.
0 comments