Like so many good ideas, Kimalé came about as a happy accident for its creator, Irène Mamfredos, the child of a French mother and Greek father.

It all started on one of her trips back from Paris when she brought back some brightly colored African wax prints and made simple outfits for her two children. The outfits were such a hit with her friends that she made a few more, and a thought took hold: what if this could work as a fashion concept?

The result was Kimalé, an eye-catching brand which Irène launched along with her friend and pattern maker Aliki Demi, applying all she’d learnt about the world of fashion over the years. “My relationship with fashion began by chance,” she says. The name is an amalgamation of her family’s names: husband Kimon, Irène and her children Margot and Léon. 

While in Paris, she was approached on the street by a man who liked her style and asked her to interview for a position at the Balenciaga fashion house. She passed and became assistant director of the Balenciaga studio in the years when Nicholas Ghesquiere (current artistic director at Louis Vuitton) was at the helm. Armed with her experience, she returned to Greece to set up a new brand, LAK by Lakis Gavalas, before working as head of production at Zeus&Δione. “In Paris where I grew up, African prints are very much a part of life. I’ve always been inspired by them,” Irène says. On visits to the markets in Paris, it was the stalls with African prints, masks and beads which would catch her eye.

 “Parisian style is very simple. This was the antithesis to that style, a way to light up the grey of Paris.” she says. In 2013, when the brand officially launched, the focus moved solely to the women’s line. A whole range of fashion styles is catered for clean-cut jackets, bold jumpsuits, high-waisted shorts, stylishly tapered trousers, skirts, peplum tops and bikinis.

 “I find that each collection spontaneously splits itself into three categories: city, beachwear and fashion,” she says.

Kimalé operates under a slow fashion concept. “It’s like fast food and slow food. Fast fashion is bad for the planet and unethically produced. At Kimalé, it might take 20 hours to make one top; it’s a thousand times slower than mass production. It’s not haute couture but each piece is truly made with love and attention,” she adds. The ethical concept extends to sourcing the materials. The wax prints she uses are authentic Dutch prints.  “Wax prints were brought to Africa by Dutch colonialists, and adopted into African culture. I source my fabrics from the best Dutch company. I hand-pick them myself from their warehouse in Paris, going on instinct, which is how I think our customers choose what to buy too.” She gets her hand-woven and hand-dyed bogolan fabrics via a French company “Les Piroguiers” which is active in Togo and Burkina Faso. Profits from sales go to helping schools with materials and funds and supporting a number of local artisans.

Each piece is made by hand from start to finish. On the more exclusive pieces, even the fish-shaped buttons are Irène’s own design. She loves these fish so much that she shrugs a shoulder out of her top to reveal the same fish as a tattoo. Her next obsession is a giraffe motif which she wants to incorporate into next year’s collection. “We’re always evolving. I know I have something very special, and the next goal is to sell via boutiques outside Greece. “The unusual fashion brand’s reputation has spread largely by word of mouth and its growing fan base of happy customers.”

 “Just over half of our customers are foreigners. I have people who are repeat customers; they might buy something one year and, the next year, get the same thing but in a different print. It helps that our stockists themselves love the product so much.” Kimalé’s workshop is currently preparing for its 2017 season. The collection will feature a wider range of outfits and embroidery on the clothes. Irène says it’s their most complete collection to date. “We pay attention to every single detail. We love what we do and when someone buys one of our pieces, we want our customers to feel that they have something special in their hands.”