Mujo. by Elizabeth Leslie

Mujo. by Elizabeth Leslie is a womenswear label, with a focus on hand-woven and sustainably crafted garments and accessories.

My hands are my tools; I use them to weave my textiles thread by thread. Each piece takes between many hours and days to complete. These pieces are hand woven panel by panel to pattern, to ensure minimal wastage and visible selvedge edges.

Once woven, each piece of cloth has its own qualities and characteristics, I find in order to make a genuine garment I must take these qualities and characteristics into consideration. In a way, I watch the yarns closely for the directions they give me. I hold no expectations of them when I work.

This commitment to painstakingly creating
garments and accessories is a powerful manifesto with which I take a stance against the insane pace and agenda of the capitalist system, the both of which are visible within the fashion industry by political extension. All threads are individually warped onto the loom. Thread by thread, they show evidence of the human hand. By the end of the finished piece the beauty of well-made human objects is made manifest in the work.

Alongside my solitary practices I collaborate with skilled artisans.. Natural dyers in Mexico and Japanese Raku potters in Venice have, respectively, carefully produced naturally dyed hand spun yarns and individually hand formed and fired pottery pieces used in selected jewellery and bag designs. I hold it to be true that there are basic human needs, both emotional and intellectual needs, which can be satisfied by our connections with traditional craftsmen and their work. Because of these needs there is a necessity to keep in life, by personal work, the ancient techniques of the cultures of the East and West. The fulfillment of these needs promises both high culture and beauty to the faithful.

As a result of the hand-crafted processes, slight irregularities remain visible within the pieces. This is celebrated rather than eliminated by a
machine. By these human discrepancies each piece becomes singular, and no two are identical in existence.