When you visit a chic shopping area–say, the Meatpacking District in New York or the Champs Élysée in Paris–you’ll find the best-known luxury brands of our time, from Chanel to Tory Burch. The vast majority were founded by white designers, with a distinctly Western point of view.
Amira Rasool thinks this is a problem; she’s on a mission to help African designers to take their place among their American and European counterparts. Four years ago, she launched The Folklore, a marketplace that curates top African designers, like Ahluwalia or Thebe Magugu. But on September 7th, the company is expanding beyond single item sales, and will soon be unveiling a new platform called The Folklore Connect that makes it easy for retailers to place bulk orders from these designers to get their clothes in front of new customers.
Rasool grew up loving fashion