Taking a Stand with Your Brand: Genderless Fashion in Africa

Grit & Growth

In Africa, as in the rest of the world, gay rights is a deeply divisive issue and queer people often face discrimination and violence. Wandia Gichuru, CEO of Vivo Fashion Group, and Chris Makena Muriithi, CEO of BOLD Network Africa, decided they wanted to do something about it using their collective strengths in business, fashion, advocacy, and storytelling. The Zoya X BOLD collection is about more than creating fashion for the queer community — it’s about starting a conversation about inclusivity and acceptance and welcoming everyone to the table.

Saying you’re a socially conscious business is a lot easier than actually being one. That’s what Wandia Gichuru learned from Chris Makena Muriithi, whose organization BOLD Network Africa advocates for LGBTQ rights. When the two met — online and, ultimately, in person — they talked and talked. And then they took action, creating an entirely new product line for the queer community.

“Fashion is a big thing for LGBTQ culture,” Muriithi explains, but clothing brands aren’t exactly serving the market. It was a perfect opportunity for Gichuru, whose Vivo Fashion Group had already built a business catering to the unique needs and preferences of African women.

Educating and engaging Vivo employees was a key first step. “If we're going to do this, we don't want to do it just as a PR exercise so we can tick the box,” Gichuru says. “Can we figure out why we're doing it and why it matters, so that as an organization we learn from this and we become more accepting?” While Gichuru wanted to take a stand, she also wanted to respect her staff, many of whom were very religious. She told them, “I'm not going to force you to work on this but I want you to understand why we're doing it.” With pride, she recalls, “Literally everyone stayed on the project. No one, no one left.”

As a former journalist, Muriithi saw that queer stories were never told with the decency they deserve. So, storytelling is a key pillar of BOLD’s advocacy work, and also of the Vivo collaboration. “Most of the stories that were told were negative. Yet we have such powerful stories about queer people who are doing well, who have businesses, who have been able to tackle life in many different shapes and forms. So for me, that was very, very important, just to be able to shed a positive light on the queer community in Africa,” he explains.

While profit wasn’t the team’s first priority, the collaboration has been a success by many measures. “The sooner people see the importance of just leading from love, accepting everybody for who they are, the better we are going to be as a society, as an economy,” Muriithi says. Gichuru elaborates, “In the long run it is going to make business sense because what you'll see is, in a world of increasing choices and a lot more competition, people will start making choices based on what they believe a brand stands for.”

Listen to their inspiring journey — the risks, rewards, and reactions — and how their professional collaboration had a profoundly personal impact as well.

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