from cameroon to south africa to british bow coverage
for the past 10 years this cameroonian brand has dedicated time energy into creating a brand
that represents african fashion by simply mixing african fabrics with classic clothing materials
colors creativity and elegance is what this brand is all about hi there i'm pamelanga and
this is the startup africa show on your favorite youtube channel tuna cheki today i am taking you
out of your world out of my world to go to eloli's world
guys welcome welcome welcome i'm so excited to be here i'm so excited to be in this space
i'm joined by the professional fashion designer creative director dedicated mother and wife and
she's an all-round elegant queen please welcome fesi eva thank you thank you for
having me thank you so much for coming i am in a loli world oh yes this is the world that we
kind of stepped into very colorful very bright and i'm so happy to be here you're welcome i actually
saw you guys um on an interview i watched a crgb interview where you came last year oh
yeah and i was like wow it's really cool and i really stopped you instantly i went on instagram
it is beautiful in buffalo i'm from kumba and buffalo is what we speak so elole means
it is beautiful or it's good it's pleasant it's definitely beautiful and lovely is not
just colors creativity also sisterhood so you built this with your sister deep or yes divorced
right so how did that kind of happen generally speaking my sisters and i are not from the same
age group so we never had the time to vibe together yeah i always had my big sisters who took
care of me but then in 2012 we happened to all be together as young women and for the first time we
started talking about fashion in a different light and telling ourselves we could we could
create something together we're very different i'm the cool toned one my second sister suma is
very vibrant when you see colors like fuchsia and red that's her and our older sister is kind of a
mix of both and the brand was the perfect way to blend all our characters in one we can definitely
see that it's definitely a lot of elegance color it's like a mixture of you're mixing
classical fabrics and then you're just putting a little bit of yeah it's like really showing that
africa is colorful and bright absolutely and you talked about 10 years i mean 2012
um 2012 yeah 22 it was december 23 exactly 10 years of hard work dedication and international
recognition and winning an award how was that even how did that happen well i'm based in yeonde
my sisters are based in well then my sister was based in toronto and our first sister is based in
london so having them in other countries made it easier i need to be honest because when people ask
me they attempted to think a loli is just me because they tend to see me more in cameroon
but without my sisters we would never with certainty we would never have had the coverage
we had when we did so my sisters were there on the ground attending events meeting people
doing all the pr work at the back while certainly i was here putting the clothes and stuff together
yes they were having everything else done so that's what we talked about sisters
one of the really nice pieces from a loli's world they have a bunch of clothes for kids
for grown women if you roam get some oh my gosh i really like capes
i'm gonna try this one this nice little jacket i think it goes in my outfit
it's looking cute or whatever first of all is the fabric can you feel the one thing
i'm so i'm i'm just so pleased to be here because you just have to appreciate the hard work
and the textile and it just shows that 10 years 10 years is nothing child because they have
invested time and energy and i'm just gonna try on this crew outfit i just i like the fact that
they're mixing different things you know like sometimes african prints they're just one print
and it's like oh yeah cute design in one print but here you have different prints different fabrics
here different prints different fabrics we have leather we have the african print we
have like the classic you know everyday you can find this anywhere and just like
it's every day but not every day like talk to me but don't talk to me i hope i look cute child
so they're just everybody children they dress men and wherever you are in the world you need this
outfit i mean this would look really cute with like jeans high-waisted jeans i would think and
a nice t-shirt inside and you would look cute on a budget or not all right how did you even feel
personally for you guys as how did like at that moment we're like wow you're on british bowl but
really in a word did that at that moment where you like this actually makes sense because sometimes
you're starting as an entrepreneur like at the beginning it's like you're hustling you're
hustling is this making sense and then once you get that link it's like yes exactly we're like
we are on to something we need to be serious we had to get more organized we had to build
a team at the time we didn't have this store no storefront we had just social media pages
instagram just started becoming a thing and all of that so we had to put our act together i think
at the time we hadn't even registered the comp the company completely these are things i've
never said but it's the truth of owning a a small business exactly so we had to put our act together
and become officially a brand wow so that clicking point of getting the the word and everything was
like you know what we're gonna take it seriously we're gonna open it and only all all the words
i wanted to know because you're the fashion the creative director you're the fashion designer
when you're designing these collections is it like you know how artists create their albums they're
really scary they're like my song come out i hope people like it do you go through that same process
honestly before i never felt that way because designing is something i do naturally i'm
naturally a creative person i draw naturally i do artistic things naturally but as some
of you might know two years ago i had a son my beautiful son hansel and things kind of changed
for me so i had to i had a hard time adjusting juggling everything and it was difficult to
to visualize things as i did before yeah but luckily enough around last year my mind the mommy
brain started taking a step back so yes i could i could create again i could visualize again so
yes it wasn't easy but i'm glad we did this yeah and what's the what's the inversion with this new
collection how do you make it different from the other one yes so this collection firstly is called
amin i'm going to say it was because it's still but for ami which means aiming to soar and
to us it's been such a long time coming i've had to go through so much where i've had ups and downs
there are many times where honestly i just wanted to look yeah close up and focus on on other things
i happen to be a lawyer as well so i had times where i would think should i just be practicing
should i but after all this while we've been able to survive and in calling the collection aiming
soaring it's our way of saying we can only go higher from this point there's no turning
back yes we can only go forward so that's what you want that's what that's art inside yeah yes
i feel like it's only up from here you can't do anything
that has always been the vision at the time when we created the brand people were in need
of african clothing of quality yes see so that's what it is about it's about creating clothes
that reflect the amazing african the boss ladies the boss the kings and the queens out there in a
relatable way every day people want to look good there's no reason why we should look good only
during events because african fashion before used to be all about events but now we're introducing
we're not sorry we're not introducing african fashion is already part of our everyday life so
that's why it really is about adding on to exactly i mean now we're seeing i think there's like a
kind of a movement now where african things are kind of moving a bit more we see africans pushing
through and just seeing that there's a cameroonian brand that's also part of the movement and that's
actually like warming and just like okay we need to highlight we need this we need to say that
we are doing things people we are doing and we're going places so yeah we're definitely going places
i'm being styled by the fashion designer the creative so please some light and some gab on here
so guys can we see me
i can't even talk anymore this is giving me ah you know i love an opportunity to shine
do you like my outfit do you like my outfit okay he said yes he likes it someone said i
look like michelle obama or something so i should practice my presidential week
vote for me this is the model for elise and this is the male shirt one of the shirts on the pieces
that they're wearing it's kind of similar to what i was wearing we're mixing leather and fabric
and it's the details when we get the zoom in you guys will understand the details and it's really
heavy and especially here in cameroon we like to we're blessed to have so many different fabrics
i just want to ask you one last question where can we save you
what is your aspiration with the brand our aspiration is to have a lolly
at the disposal of everybody who wants to be afro-centric in an amazing way so for all those
out there who want to be part of the african movement because africa is having a moment
suddenly the music industry the fashion industry the sports industry everything is coming to
glorious light and we want for everybody to be a part of it it's not just a cameroonian thing
we named eloli after our first place but it's not just our baby we want eloly to be the world's baby
we want elole to be accessible everywhere we ship worldwide for that reason we try to make our our
public we try to be in touch with our public and certainly it's always perfect but this year we
intend to be all over the place we intend to be out there yes and in touch with the public
we would love to see a loli's world everybody's everywhere everywhere every way thank you so much
thank you thank you so much for having me you guys already see its colors it's brightness it's africa
it's available online you can hit up um the lowly world on instagram i'll put all their contacts and
details in the description box they ship worldwide and you do not want to miss this opportunity to
wear such elegant bright and creative designs thank you thank you that's it for this week's
episode of the start of africa show i hope you enjoyed that and if you haven't yet please go
check out our last week's episode where we at and we chatted with nick catch you next time
on the start of africa show the pan african show that doesn't just talk about entrepreneurship
but meets the entrepreneurs right where they are i'm your host and remember africa is watching
you