THE HAIRPOLITAN MAGAZINE VOL 5 APRIL 2017
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FEATURE STORY<br />
Wanjiku Nyoike-Mugo:<br />
Journey from blogger<br />
to fashion entreprenuer<br />
by Nali. W Imende<br />
Image on previous page: Wanjiku Nyoike-Mugo at her store The Designer’s Studio (TDS). Current Page: stocks a wide<br />
variety of Kenyan designers including Ikonn, Koroo, Deepa Dosaja among others.<br />
“<br />
I had always<br />
wanted to<br />
start a shop<br />
where we sold<br />
Kenyan stuff!<br />
“<br />
Image Credit: Nali W. Imende<br />
What’s most impressive about Wanjiku Nyoike-Mugo, of course apart from how smart she is - and I’m telling<br />
you she is smart - is how super organised and driven she is. In 2011, before starting her job at the United<br />
Nations (UN), she had already written down the name of the store that she dreamed of owning. It’s now<br />
<strong>2017</strong> and she is the owner of The Designers Studio (TDS), a Kenyan fashion store in the newly opened Two<br />
Rivers Mall situated in Nairobi’s Upmarket Gigiri environs.<br />
So how did a young woman working in a dream job for many, find herself running a fashion business? It<br />
all took root during her time at the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa a.k.a Wits. Wanjiku studied<br />
Law and though she enjoyed her classes was always a creative at heart. “The way Wits was, you had West<br />
Campus, which was the white collar job people, commerce, law; and then you had East Campus which was<br />
the fun artsy one. I went to West campus to do classes but I hang out at East campus, I always had creative<br />
friends. My friends were like drama students, music students and I was in the choir as well. It was like having<br />
a day job and part time job...I was just between the two,” she explains.<br />
It was while she was in South Africa that she came across one of her main inspirations, The Young Designers<br />
Emporium (YDE). YDE sold clothing made by emerging South African designers thus giving them a platform<br />
to sell their clothing to South Africans. “When I would come back to Kenya one either went to Toi, Gikomba,<br />
Woolworths, Mr. Price to buy clothes which didn’t make sense because then it’s like...but where do you buy<br />
‘our’ clothes, what exactly are we doing for ourselves?”<br />
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