I'm Liza Njoki Colbeck, founder of IN OUR NAME.
Before this brand existed, I spent close to three decades working across global fashion supply chains, mostly in the global north, helping some of the biggest names in retail solve commercial and manufacturing problems. I chaired the Data Analysis Committee for SizeUK, the UK Government-sponsored programme that scanned over 11,000 bodies to improve how 16 major retailers, including Next, John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Paul Smith, size their clothes. I contributed to the formative development of the Ethical Trading Initiative and SEDEX, two of the frameworks that now underpin responsible sourcing across the industry.
For years, that work kept me looking at fashion from the global north outward. Then I began working with the African Union's Pan-African Fashion Initiative, co-chairing the strategy for industrialising Africa's cotton, textile and apparel value chain. That work changed how I saw the industry, and it changed how I saw myself in it.
I grew up in Nakuru, a lakeside town in Kenya's Great Rift Valley. I'd always known the skill and creativity that existed there. What that African Union work showed me, with the weight of thirty years of industry experience behind it, was how rarely that talent gets recognised on equal terms in the global marketplace. Not because the skill is lacking. Because the story is missing.
IN OUR NAME is my answer to that. Every collection is designed in the UK and Kenya, and made exclusively in Kenya, in close collaboration with skilled makers and a small production partner in Athi River, Kajiado District. I bring the same standards here that I brought to SizeUK, ETI and SEDEX: real data, real accountability, and a refusal to settle for good enough when better is possible.
This isn't a side project. I am sharing my expertise in a place and with people I believe deserve it.