Chidi Mutua
Àyòọba Insights
Osu House works out of Mombasa, Kenya, and has built its name on embroidery. The workshop is small by design — the founder is clear that growing it would mean losing the part they care about.
Most of what leaves the workshop is cut from Handwoven cotton. Plain-woven on a pit loom, then washed soft. That single constraint shapes almost everything else about how the studio works, from lead times to what they will and will not take on.
Ask about the hardest part and the answer is never the making. It is the waiting — for cloth to arrive, for dye to take, for a customer to reply about a fitting. Everyone in this trade says a version of this.
If you are commissioning from Mombasa for the first time, budget for the lead time and for customs, ask for a video rather than photographs, and expect to pay a deposit. None of that is a red flag; all of it is how the trade works.
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