Maison · Est. San Francisco & Ouagadougou
Damiba Studio
Designed in San Francisco. Built in Burkina Faso. Sold everywhere. A house of Faso Dan Fani, the strip-woven cotton of the Mossi, worked in three hands: cloth, adornment, dwelling.
Maison · Est. San Francisco & Ouagadougou
Designed in San Francisco. Built in Burkina Faso. Sold everywhere. A house of Faso Dan Fani, the strip-woven cotton of the Mossi, worked in three hands: cloth, adornment, dwelling.
Every Cantica is a crossing. Purgatorio now; a Big Bang or a parted sea to come. The realm changes. The pilgrim and his guide do not. Dante, and the Virgil who leads him · the seeker and the one who knows the way · the vow made at the threshold
Between the fire below and the light above stands the middle mountain, where the dead are not yet finished. Cantica I is cut for the climb.
Cantica I · Purgatorio
Faso Dan Fani · Ten looks
Cantica I · Look 01 · Faso Dan Fani
Tailored like the East Coast, woven in Ouagadougou, composed like a fresco. Worn all at once.
The House keeps three métiers
A maison keeps standing divisions. The cantiche pass with the seasons; the three métiers stay.
Garments cut from the strip loom. Its first language; where every Cantica is dressed.
Worn closest to the body: metal, stone, bone. What outlasts the cloth.
The cloth brought indoors. For the table, the bed, the long ordinary hours.
[ Cantica I · The Collection ]
Nine looks · one cloth · a lookbook, not a store
Nine painters of the crossing, each printed onto Faso Dan Fani. Every look takes the name of a Mossi town, and Dante's second realm lands on the plateau: Purgatory, relocated. The pictures come from everywhere. The cloth comes from one place. That is why it is sold everywhere.
The cloth · Faso Dan Fani
Faso Dan Fani, "the woven cloth of the homeland," is the handwoven cotton of Burkina Faso. Grown on the plateau, spun, dyed in indigo and ochre, thrown in narrow strips on wooden looms, then sewn band to band into one cloth.
DAMIBA builds from the strip, not onto it. The weave is not a pattern printed on a European garment; it is what the garment is made of. The loom comes before the pattern-cutter.
Before a single garment: three weeks spent deciding how DAMIBA speaks, in that order. How the identity was made.