Half Greek, half Jordanian sisters, Nafsika and Stephanie Skourti, established their womenswear brand, Nafsika Skourti, out of their home in Jordan as an ode to the female voice. Through print, embroidery and ongoing textile development fashion house creates sharp separates, couture details and modern tailoring.
Nafsika Skourti brand merges Middle Eastern glamour with avant-garde London energy. Weaving cultural narratives and explorations of region-specific history and humour, the Nafsika Skourti aesthetic is a beautiful pairing of glamour and anti-glamour.
Nafsika Skourti is half Greek and half Jordanian. She graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2012 and worked at Marchesa in New York. She also trained in haute couture embroidery and passementerie at Ecole Lesage in Paris. Stephanie Skourti graduated from Warwick University in the UK with a Bachelors of Law. After working at Goldman Sachs for five years, she left the corporate world to join forces with her sister. Swapping finance for fashion in 2014 was a passion driven move as the sisters set out to build something meaningful. Together, they established the Nafsika Skourti brand out of their home in Jordan. Always designing with an acute sensitivity to the female voice, the sisters celebrate the matriarchs that surround them. Avid listeners and observers, they are women designing for women, serving the many facets of a woman’s femininity through cut and expression of dress.
Believers in considerate design, they seek to produce high quality, long lasting and versatile pieces. Using their moral and technical imagination to create products that are value adding to the wearer, the makers and their community. With a holistic approach that focuses on collaboration and consciousness they have instilled a culture of empowerment, education and engagement into the Nafsika Skourti brand.
The mission statement: to make valuable things that contribute to a positive collective future. Collections are built around an eclectic mix of references, research and textile development. Nafsika and Stephanie Skourti, two Greek-Jordanian sisters with a balance of fashion and business savvy, are the duo behind the label.
Nafsika Skourti has presented eight collections at Paris Fashion Week in international showrooms. Since its inception in 2014, the label has received much recognition from press and celebrities alike and has gone on to be featured in i-D, W Magazine, Wonderland Magazine, Dazed and Vogue. Nafsika Skourti was also a finalist in the 2015 Dubai Design Fashion Council’s Style Arabia Prize. The label is stocked at department stores and boutiques across the Middle East, Europe and Asia, and has secured seed-round investment.
EMBROIDERY WITH A POWERFULL MESSAGE
Our Collective Future is a sustainability initiative that considers the social, cultural and economic impact of the business in Amman, Jordan, through a talent-focused design strategy. Born out of a humanitarian crisis of displacement for Syrian refugees and the economic instability in the country exacerbated by Covid-19, Our Collective Future was created to help vulnerable communities find a pathway out of poverty and set them up for success in the world.
Embroidery is one of the oldest expressions of culture and tradition, and continues to be a source of income for generations of women in the Middle East. And working women have proven to be key in community development and financial stability for families that live here. Over the last 3 years, the sisters behind Nafsika Skourti have built a network of artisans that they collaborate with to produce and develop hand-crafted design details now present in every Nafsika Skourti collection. From the modern hand embroidery and beadwork of Syrian refugee artisans for who they secured work permits, to a local flag screenprinter who skillfully prints custom patterns on their fabrics, they are committed to providing sustainable jobs for those in need. And, particularly, for women.
