A fabric shop in Accra.
THE CLOTH YOU chooseSPEAKS FOR you.
We hunt for cloth worth sewing — and we don't stock what everyone else already has.
Serkiva buys from Ghanaian mills, from other West African producers, from European wax houses, and from further afield when something is worth the trip. Nothing arrives on a standing order. We go and look, we put our hands on it, and we buy what is worth buying. It is why the cloth you find here may not be here next month, and often cannot be found again.
how we choose
WE BUY WITHOUR hands
the hand
Weight and stiffness between the fingers. Cheap wax gives itself away as a papery finish long before it gives itself away in the wash.
the light
Held up, the weave tells you how densely it was made — and whether whatever you sew from it is going to need lining.
the colour
Rubbed, and wetted. If the dye lifts here it will lift at home, and that is the complaint we would rather never receive.
the selvedge
The edge carries the mill's marks and the honest record of the print — registration, saturation, and how much care went into it.
and then the hardest question
WE DON'T STOCK WHATEVERYONE already has.
The hard questionis not is it good.
Plenty of cloth passes the hand, the light, the colour and the selvedge, and still does not make it onto our shelves.
The last question is whether anyone actually needs it. Half of Accra is selling the same handful of prints, and a good cloth that everybody already has is worth neither your money nor our shelf. So we leave it and keep looking. That is the slow part of this work, and the reason our stock is smaller than it could be and changes more often than it should.
WHEN IT IS GONE,IT IS gone.
in stock
“We are not trying to sell you the most cloth. We are trying to be the reason you did not settle.”
FOUNDER NAME,
founder of serkiva
IT IS NOT WRONG TO GO BACK FOR THAT WHICH YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN.
Come and seewhat is in this week.
Stock changes constantly. What is here now may not be here next month.