Brand history
My name is Yao Samson Feli, I am the founder of Samson. I am a young man who is passionate and concerned about the impact of the fashion industry on the environment. It sounds simple but it changes everything compared to the big clothing brands and their production methods. The fashion industry alone produces 92 million tons of waste per year. This is largely due to the explosion of fast fashion and over-consumption. Recycling initiatives are multiplying around the transformation of waste and the development of more innovative processes and materials. However, recycling represents only a tiny percentage of the waste produced. Indeed, today, recycling objects on a large scale requires significant resources and technical means. This is the reason why poor or developing countries like Togo cannot afford it. However, it is often here that the waste produced by the fashion industry ends up. Two years ago, I created the Samson Feli clothing brand by self-financing to address this problem and the lack of adequate resources for recycling. I decided to limit the impact of fashion on the environment on my own small scale by giving a second life to fabrics from the end of collections of major textile and clothing brands. I only use upcycling fabrics.
I'm a nature lover
I grew up in Tsévié, a small town located 35 km north of Lomé. A city immersed in nature at the time. I am therefore intimately linked to the environment. For me it was the best place to spend my childhood, to discover the nature which was not so far from the houses as in Lomé. The clean air, the vegetation, and the beauty that this place offered helped me to understand the importance of the environment in our daily life and why it should be preserved. I also inherited a lot of the cultural and artisanal richness of this region, which is now present in all my creations.
Fashion made me
My mother was my only parental figure. I lived with her until I was 17. She was a seamstress and made clothes for men and women. I literally grew up in her workshop amidst the wax fabrics, the machines and her apprentices. I helped her in the workshop whenever I could. I was able to learn the basics of sewing and know the structure of different types of clothing. At 17, after my high school diploma I went to university where I studied journalism. I then lost this love for fashion and clothes. But, in 2018, when I went to live in Dakar for a second time, I found this lost passion and decided to make it my main activity. Indeed, in Dakar, my circle of friends was made up that actors of the fashion. Stylists, photographers, models, fashion bloggers, etc… people with a very specific vision of fashion and what they do with it. That was my biggest motivation.
My products
Sustainable fashion, in my opinion, is a fashion that aims to extend the life of a garment and reduce its environmental impact. Thus, beyond using recycled materials, I act at all other levels of the life cycle of the garment: the cut, the recyclability, the manufacturing method and the quantities produced.
My clothes are cut only in cotton and satin cotton of end of series and quality sourced in the end of series of the big brands. Then overcycled with the tie and dye technique.
My products are manufactured in a short circuit. Everything is produced in Togo in a radius of 40km.
