The beautiful South African sishweshwe fabric!

The formal name for "shweshwe" is ‘Indigo-dyed discharge printed fabric’. Historians claim that indigo cloth arrived in Africa nearly more than 2000 years ago, used as trade goods by the Arabs and Indians. But it really took off in South Africa when German settlers introduced it to the Xhosa people in the mid-1800s.

 

Shweshwe is a stiff cotton fabric that initially came from India and was heavily starched to fight off the damp in the ships’ storage compartments as it crossed the ocean to the Eastern Cape. Xhosa women took a look at these wondrous bolts of cloth, fell in love with the shweshwe fabric and made it their own.

Described as the denim of South Africa, shweshwe, the pure cotton fabric in multiple patterns and colours produced exclusively in the Eastern Cape province, is worn by women in every cranny of the country.

 

 

 

South African jewel is certainly taking over the world!

 

xoxo