Photos: Courtesy of Holly Dunlap and 4MaCoHa
MaCoHa—no, it’s not some Manhattan neighborhood you’ve never heard of. It stands for the Malawi Council for the Handicapped, and it’s Holly Dunlap’s current cause célèbre and design collaborator. A little over two years ago, Dunlap discontinued her successful footwear and accessories line Hollywould and decamped to Africa. It was there that she met her Italian beau, who was building a school in Malawi, and decided to “trade one life in for another.” So she swapped the parties, manicures, and air conditioning in New York and Los Angeles for a 1984 Toyota Sprinter, no Internet, and the simple life.
Dunlap’s new label 4MaCoHa offers embroidered tunics ($95 to $150) and home goods ($65 to $595), which are all made from local Malawian cotton by MaCoHa’s disabled employees, who are deaf, blind, or have amputated limbs (the head patternmaker is a double amputee). At a preview for the label’s Resort launch collection yesterday, Dunlap explained that “because of witchcraft dogmas, people in Africa still think that if someone has a handicapped baby, then their family is cursed, and MaCoHa is about showing the country what [the] disabled can do.” Dunlap tried to stay true to traditional African designs (they’ve been making caftans since the seventies) and picked the bright color palette. She also added in a few personal references to the collection, like the hand-loomed rug that took over a week to make, which looks like the poster for 1960’s surf documentary The Endless Summer (Dunlap loves to hang ten). Dunlap’s goal is to create more employment opportunities for MaCoHa and to create a demand in the country for their own products instead of exporting everything. The MaCoHa artisans, who “were born smiling,” are enjoying their moment in the sun. “They look at themselves on the Web site and say, ‘That’s me!’,” Dunlap said. “They love a little bit of fame.”
4MaCoHa goes on sale in December on L-attitude.com.
—Brittany Adams
