THE BWANAS
Clothing project, 2026
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Bwana is a shirt with no collar, no structure, no rules. Soft organic cotton, a piped neckband, a loose cut you cinch with a belt; worn closed like a shirt, or open like a tunic. We designed it for this nonchalance, this roughness, this attitude and style. Bwana is the boss: the city tycoon, the beach pacha, the sun prince, the skyline king. We hope you'll agree it is worn just as well by the son and the father, the art dealer and the oil villain, the billionaire golfer, the city wanderer, the bike speeder, the metro poser, the Californian idler, the gym rat, the beach icon.
It began in Los Angeles, between 2017 and 2019. Then we stopped: our work as artists, designers and architects took us away from clothing. This July 2026, Bwana comes back — a new capsule we call it a Clothing Project.
Bwana Buana
The name is Swahili. Bwana means mister, sir. It comes from the countries of the wax and kente prints we first found on markets and made up in small factories in downtown Los Angeles. This year, most of our production moved to the province of Bali, in Indonesia, and so we added a second word that sounds almost the same: Buana, Indonesian for the world. One name, two origins — master and world.
In Bali, in the village of Canggu, our fabrics are prepared by hand — hand-dyed, hand-printed, on organic cotton, in simple patterns and colors we couldn't find in small quantities anywhere else. The collection is enriched by more formal cotton prints, chosen with our collaborator in Morocco.
Our craft
Each Bwana is made by hand, by a small sewing team. We inspect every piece before it leaves us, but we accept the small irregularities that come with the human hand. Keeping our runs small is a deliberate choice: a stitch, a seam, a slight unevenness may surprise you. That is the craftsmanship we chose, not a fault in it. We favor durability, so the shirt ages well and earns its patina over time. If something ever feels beyond what you'd expect of us, tell us — we hold our standards close.
As for how we wear ours: sleeves rolled as far as they'll go and tied, before the front is ever opened. In the city, we like them heavily starched.
Warmly,
Thomas and the Bwana team