Pagne Baoulé
Côte d'Ivoire
Woven by the Baoulé in narrow strips on a hand loom, then sewn edge to edge. Deep indigo, ivory and gold. The seams are the point — you can see where every strip meets.
Côte d’Ivoire · Handwoven
Ties woven by hand,not printed by machine.
Baoulé, Kente and Kita cloth — made on a loom, one narrow strip at a time, by weavers in Côte d’Ivoire. I lived in Abidjan for two years. I’m going straight to the people who make it.
Shop the ties — $488 in stock, ships this week
In stock · ships this week
Eight ties. Each one is the only one.
These are the ties I brought back from Abidjan. They were woven by hand, so no two are the same — when one is gone, it’s gone. 8 left.
Baoulé No. 1
Indigo and ivory strips with gold weft blocks.
$48View →
Baoulé No. 2
Deeper indigo, tighter banding.
$48View →
Kente No. 1
Gold and green — the pattern people recognise.
$48View →
Kente No. 2
Heavier on the red, with black seams.
$48View →
Kente No. 3
Gold-dominant, close to the traditional Ashanti weave.
$48View →
Kita No. 1
Terracotta and cream in tight repeating bands.
$48View →
Kita No. 2
Quieter, easiest one to wear with a plain shirt.
$48View →
Kita No. 3
Black and terracotta with a narrow cream stripe.
$48View →
Pre-order · ships in 2–3 months
Want one from the next batch?
Pre-orders are $40 instead of $48 — you’re waiting, so you pay less. Your money funds the trip and the order. If it takes longer than 2–3 months you can have it back, no questions.
The cloth
Three weaves. Every one made by a person, not a printer.
Kente
Ghana & Côte d'Ivoire
The one people recognise. Every colour and block pattern carries meaning — gold for status, green for growth. Woven the same way for three hundred years.
Pagne Kita
Côte d'Ivoire
Terracotta, black and cream in tight repeating bands. Quieter than kente and, to my eye, the easiest one to wear with a plain shirt.
Your photoIdeally one of you in Côte d’Ivoire
Wil Sanders
Two years in Abidjan · now in San Clemente, CA
About me
I’m not importing these.I’m going and getting them.
I’m Wil. I spent two years in Côte d’Ivoire — mostly Abidjan, in and out of Cocody, Koumassi and Bingerville, with time out in Ayamé. I speak French and picked up some of the local dialects while I was there.
I found the ties through a vendor who came by the mission office. He sold mostly to missionaries, and I bought a few off him because I liked them. Then I wore them home to California and people wouldn’t stop asking where they came from.
Which is the whole reason this exists. That vendor is a middleman, and there’s another one behind him. Nobody in that chain sat at the loom. So I’m working back through my contacts in Abidjan to reach the weavers themselves — in French, which is the part most people can’t do — so that the people actually making the cloth get paid like it.
I started with ties because they fit everybody. No sizes, no guessing. Dresses in wax pagne are coming later, but I’d rather do one thing properly first.