ABOUT US
Bow Bow Ink proudly creates hand crafted pencil skirts from fabulous fabric spanning the African continent.
Ethical fashion, sustainability and women's empowerment are threaded throughout Bow Bow Ink from selection, manufacturing to execution and serve as our driving principles. Bow Bow Ink hand selects fabric from African factories taking the magnificent tradition, vibrant colors, and catapulting prints of kanga, kente and shweshwe and bringing them to a new modern look, meeting a global standard.
All of our skirts are made at an ethical and eco-friendly factory in Kenya, the fabrics for our current line are from Ghana and all are 100% woven cotton. Further, 10% of profits go towards women and girls empowerment programs across the African continent. Bow Bow Ink believes that fashion can be done superbly with purpose with ethical and sustainable standards. Our prints come from Ghana, Senegal, Angola, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria to name a few.
Working solely with ISO certified factories, Bow Bow Ink hand selects exceptional prints bringing them to pencil skirt perfection. Driven through over a decade of work on the African continent on women's empowerment and equality, Bow Bow Ink has a unique understanding of the way clothes should be made. Equality is driven by empowerment. Bow Bow Ink collaborates with Soko, a unique eco-factory in central Kenya, whose vision >it is to provide the fashion industry with a manufacturing unit with social and environmental issues at the heart of its business.
We source only from ISO ethical certified factories across the African continent. Keeping our practices local, sustainable and socially responsible. Made in Kenya, fabric from Ghana and 100% woven cotton.
Cristin // Founder
Cristin is a public health practitioner, social worker and fashionista. Flitting around the African continent for over a decade, her life’s work is a commitment to equality and empowerment through improving access to health services and rights. It is through this experience that Bow Bow Ink firmly believes without sustainable employment, access to basic health services and education and the opportunity for reliable work, poverty deepens and equality moves farther from reality. In order to change this paradigm, Bow Bow Ink infuses ethics, transparency, fair trade and accountability into every step of creating our beautiful designs. Questioning ‘who made my clothes?’, broadening skills and creating a standard for global design, Bow Bow Ink is proud of every unique skirt we produce.
Melissa
From her time spent in Kenya to other travels around Africa and beyond, Melissa shares Cristin's passion for improving the lives of people around the globe. Focused on logistics and dedicated to solutions, she is excited to be part of an endeavor where each pencil skirt tells a story and is a positive force for good in the lives of the wearers and the many individuals that contributed to its creation.
SOKO
Soko proves that it is possible to run a self-sustaining manufacturing business whilst having social and environmental principles at its core - paying fair wages, providing needed social services, a pleasant place of work and a commitment to limit its environmental impact.
Soko is based in the highest unemployment rate area in Kenya, with a high rate of prostitution, HIV/AIDS and wildlife poaching. Through training and employment SOKO has enabled women to take control of their own lives. Through having their own income these women cover the costs of sending their children to school, provide nutritious meals for the family and make decisions on how they spend their money - it allows them to lift themselves out of poverty.
All employees have access to a pre-school for their children, free medical care and a kitchen and dining room serving tea and a hot meal daily.
SOKO is committed to producing high quality garments and through this providing people within our community with the opportunity, through employment not charity, to improve their lives and the lives of their families.
Additionally, SOKO runs a Community Trust with the aim to provide people with the practical skills needed to see sustainable improvements in their lives and lift themselves out of poverty.
Further, they manage a Stitching Academy where to date 70% of the graduates of the Stitching Academy are in permanent employment.
For more information about SOKO, seek it here: www.soko-kenya.com
