Mille Collines

The story starts in Kigali in 2006, when Ines Cuatrecasas, a Spanish design student, met Antoinette Mukakalisa, a Rwandan seamstress. A year later, Cuatrecasas developed her university thesis collection at Antoinette's atelier — the beginning of a working relationship that would eventually shape a brand. Marc Oliver Sancho joined Ines in Kigali soon after, and together they founded mille collines in 2009. The name came from the tailors at that first Kigali atelier, who voted to call it "Atelier des mille collines," borrowing Rwanda's own nickname: le pays des mille collines, the land of a thousand hills.

That atelier-first origin still shapes how the brand works. Garments start life as sketches developed with skilled workers across Rwanda and Kenya, brought through a months-long process into pieces meant to be kept and passed on rather than replaced. The aesthetic pairs a Nordic restraint with the boldness of African textile — kitenge, soft cotton, traditionally jacquard-woven cloth — with each piece built to carry the history of the region it came from.

Now headquartered in Cape Town, mille collines has moved through Rwanda, Kenya, and South Africa, each country leaving its mark on the brand's design language. The mission has stayed consistent throughout: reimagining the continent's artisanal heritage into designs made in Africa, by African makers, for a global community. "In a world where differences are increasingly emphasized and where people are divided and separated," the brand told Forbes Africa, "it seemed fitting to celebrate the rich beauty that comes from combining many different influences."