MAFI MAFI is a trailblazing sustainable fashion label with a design mission to merge the richness of ancient Ethiopian heritage with ready-to-wear apparel. We use hand-woven cloth made by local artisan weavers to craft versatile, wearable, and accessible luxury pieces. Established in 2011 in Addis Ababa, MAFI MAFI is a social enterprise celebrated globally for empowering and upskilling young artisan weavers, designers, pattern makers, seamstresses, and factory workers with livable wages, apprenticeships, and personal development in a familial workshop setting.
Mahlet Afework—affectionately known as Mafi—is inspired by childhood memories of her mother, a seamstress with a small business embroidering and selling lavish traditional textiles to community members for special occasions. Growing up, Mafi wore these traditional garments as her Sunday Best as she modelled them at church. Mafi’s own design and entrepreneurship acumen developed as a teenage rapper in Addis Ababa’s underground hip hop scene, when a gap in Ethiopia's urban streetwear market limited her ability to style music videos.
“I loved the hip hop aesthetic, and I was also attached to my culture,” she says. “I created MAFI MAFI to give a modern expression to ancient textile techniques while creating new design and production knowledge systems.”
MAFI MAFI produces one ready-to-wear collection per year, with a vision to disrupt exploitative and unsustainable clothing and textiles industries and decentralize the global fashion calendars that underpin them. We prioritize social, economic and environmental impact across our production value chain, from sourcing raw materials locally and paying workers equitably, to using hydropower energy and eliminating textile waste.
Empowering People | Futurizing Heritage | Staying Sustainable
Ethiopia’s rich textile tradition is a way of life with enduring cultural relevance. We preserve our historically sustainable heritage with each step of our design process, from concept to your closet.
PROCESS Instead of creating seasonal collections, we focus on in-house production solutions to craft wearable pieces that tell a story, respect the workers whose hands make them, and protect the environment that grows their materials. Our production team of 55 designers, weavers, pattern makers, seamstresses, quality assurance auditors, and packagers collaborate to design textile patterns and garments together. Next, our talented artisans weave the cloth on a traditional loom in our production facility. We operate a zero plastic workshop, and limit our environmental footprint with product packaging and labelling that is recycled and biodegradable. Our facility is committed to eliminating waste production, and all unused textiles are upcycled into garments, accessories, and tote bags by a dedicated upcycling team. The workshop is neighbored by our flagship showroom where all MAFI MAFI pieces are sold. Customers often pop in to meet the dynamic, passionate team behind their new modern heirlooms.
