Rhona Nampijja

Ten Years of Study Before a Label

Nampijja's route to her own label was long and deliberately educational. The dream of creating a label started when she was 16, with a diploma course in art and design at Croydon College. She then took an honours degree in fashion at Ravensbourne College of Art, graduating in 1995, and while studying there won a number of awards, including a nationwide bursary design competition, and was awarded the student medal in 1994. After Ravensbourne she moved to the Royal College of Art in London for two years of master's study in fashion. Counted together, that is over ten years of study before the label launched — a foundation course, a degree and a postgraduate degree, each at a recognised London art institution. The awards matter because they show the study was not merely long: a nationwide bursary competition and a student medal are competitive judgements by people outside her own college, evidence that the work was winning recognition while she was still a student.

Technology Meets Traditional Method

At the Royal College of Art she found a flair for computers, combining technology and traditional methods of design to produce the concepts that inspired the Pijja label. That combination is the label's founding idea, and it is worth separating its two halves. Traditional methods — drawing, cutting, draping, printing by hand — carry the craft knowledge of how cloth behaves. Computer methods carry speed, repeatability and the ability to test a pattern or print at many scales before committing to fabric. A designer fluent in both can prototype digitally and finish by hand, which is precisely the workflow a small label needs: few staff, many ideas, and no budget for wasted production runs. The same combination later powered the interiors side, where printed textiles and laminates for architects are specified, sampled and reproduced — work in which digital accuracy and traditional textile craft meet on every order.

Pijja: Urban Fashion and Interiors Together

In 2002 Pijja was born: a signature men's and women's wear label, with Nampijja as designer, producer and distributor of high-end urban fashion targeted at women and men between the ages of 12 and 45. The range was broad from the start: contemporary urban wear including shirting, T-shirts, jeans wear, underwear, accessories and footwear, sold through selected specialty apparel shops worldwide, with several licensing deals signed for the apparel line. The label's stated focus is on concept, innovation and design for the consumer market — concept first, which reflects the Royal College training: the idea of a garment leads, and the product follows.

Alongside the clothing, Pijja Interiors developed a full range of contemporary furnishing fabrics, supplying printed textiles, fabrics and laminates to architects and interior designers for both domestic and contract markets, and Pijja secured fashion and interior contracts with various international companies and corporations. Running fashion and interiors under one name is unusual but coherent for this designer: both sides sell printed and constructed textiles, one worn and one lived with, and both rest on the same founding method of technology combined with traditional design. The decade of study that looked slow at the time — diploma, degree, master's — turns out to have been preparation for exactly this breadth: a label whose founder could design a T-shirt, a furnishing fabric and the digital print that joins them.