Live in: London
Why the term Muzungu?
Tatiana: We were in Kenya and we began to jokingly call each other that, since it’s Swahili for “traveler.” That’s also how many Kenyans would greet us, as foreigners.”
Dana: Yes, and since we didn’t live in racially charged settings ourselves, we interpreted the term in a humorous way. We wanted an original and catchy name.
Describe why you focus so much on indigenous fabrics and crafts?
Tatiana: Both of our parents instilled a form of curiousity for travel and we were exposed to arts and crafts from foreign places from a young age. My parents were Brazilian-Columbian, French-educated mostly. I went to an international school in Geneva with a lot of UN kids from all over the world: India, Africa, and China. I learned a lot by visiting their homes. My godfather was in Bali and we always visited him and passed through places like Hong Kong and Singapore on the way there. Both my parents had a passion for Anglo-Indian literature and furniture.
Dana: As an Iranian, my cultural heritage was hammered into me as a child. I grew up in Cyprus and I guess you could say my parents were real Orientalists. They always brought something back from their visits to Morocco and the Middle East.
Can you pinpoint what inspired you to work in this way?
Dana: The main imperative has to do with having the local artisans reap their profits directly, by buying from them, instead of employing them in a factory where they are underpaid, or mistreated and not in control of the final product. In this case, they set the retail price that can sustain their livelihood. We also work with fair trade cooperatives and local NGOs to produce our clothes and accessories. For instance, we work with a Peruvian cooperative comprising a family of weavers who started changing their traditional costume from Alpaca wool to synthetic materials. So we ordered them in the original wool, preserved in vegetable oil in order to keep this old technique alive. We also found the last remaining woman in Sicily who weaves baskets in a particular way. She is the only one who still knows how to; and we commissioned her to produce some pieces for us.
Tatiana: We are not really designers, but this concept allows us to preserve local traditions in craftsmanship
What makes Muzungu Sisters’ items so edgy today then?
Dana: Our pieces are actually very traditional, but it depends on how you wear them. For instance, we brought over Cypriot folkloric pants, which have embroidery that is similar to Palestinian designs. You will see very few people wearing them in the new generation. I wore them at our pop-up store opening at Kitsch, with high heels. Even the fashion victims can find ways to pair these traditional tunics for example, with jean shorts, or a Gucci bag.
Why did you decide to launch as a pop-up store and how do you choose the locations for your pop-ups?
Tatiana: We started out as a website, but wanted to create a kind of online home as well as a travelling shop, and also to have people see the things physically, get a feel of our concept through the materials and textures we have produced.
Dana: Generally, they are young and funky concept stores, much like Kitsch in Beirut, where young girls go - where you can buy even the art off the wall - and places that do not take themselves too seriously.
And why did you choose Momo’s in London as the place for your official launch?
Dana: Ten years ago, Momo’s was where we would hang out, as a place that defined an ethnic zeitgeist and so, it was an iconic setting. Our pieces looked like they belonged there.
Tatiana: It was our longest pop-up (7 weeks), and the place simply made sense. We had just started and it gave us structure
You work a bit like fashion anthropologists. How do you actually select your products or source your fashions?
Tatiana: That’s easy, we look for handmade things we like in souks for instance, and what we would wear, reflecting our personal tastes. There’s also what we actually grew up wearing such as sarongs from Bali or Brazilian-style pants, and Moroccan coats.
If you could choose a place more remote than these metropolitan centres where you are showing your work, where would it be?
Dana: I would love to say a market stall in the middle of nowhere, but it’s not interesting to sell traditional costumes in the actual places they are from, since they are more accessible there.
What was your collaboration like with Missoni for the Small Steps project?
Dana: Missoni donated fabrics from their old collections for our commission of limited-edition loafers. Sometimes, their leftovers would make as much as 40 metres in length that would be otherwise discarded.
Tatiana: It’s the idea of the human footprint. So many children and communities live amongst rubbish dumps and I was shocked to see this in the Philippines, not to mention that most of this rubbish originates from the West, and not many people care about this issue. Small Steps works by providing boots and hygiene kits to the children and families who survive through these dumps by scavenging for a living, before trying to get them in schools and out of poverty.
Do you have a role model in fashion design?
Tatiana: I would say Diane von Furstenberg for being a mother, a grandmother, as well as a tycoon and she is also president of the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America)
Dana: And she does so much for women
If you weren’t doing this, what else would you do?
Dana: I worked for a long time in human rights and international affairs, especially with advocacy issues related to the Middle East and I’m still involved. I see this as an extension of that, in developing a morally responsible business and corporate social responsibility. I might go back to studies one day and do my PHD
Tatiana: I studied visual communications and worked at Vanity Fair for a while, in design, research and concept management. I always wanted to find a job that enabled me to travel for work and curate what I collected on my journeys.
What are your respective roles in Muzungu sisters?
Both: They are not defined.
What’s the best thing about your job?
Dana: The human encounters, when we realise we are affecting people we don’t know, who we might never meet.
What would you say is different or special about Muzungu?
Tatiana: It inspires people to dream, there’s this element of wanderlust with products sourced from all over the world, from a corner of Nevada all the way to Peru.
What is the most challenging thing about your job?
Tatiana: The quality we get. We are not there for the production of the products, some of which take about 6 months to make. We would have made the orders, paid for the transport, import tax and then receive something that needs to be sent back and re-done.
Dana: We are not designers. We were thrown into this, so we don’t have seasonal collections either.
Places you dream of visiting?
Laos, Vietnam
What’s your next destination?
Dana: Mykonos in Greece
The most beautiful place you’ve visited:
Dana: In Northern Argentina, the Salta province, which was like the end of the earth with salt beds mirroring the sky
Tatiana: Every time you went round a corner, it was like a radically different landscape, from mountains to plains. In Northern Argentina, made you feel as if you were alone in the world.
