Brand to Know: The Kenyan Line That Makes Only One Dress

By: Merrell Hambleton | Photo by: Sandra Zhao

When preparing for a trip to South Sudan last May, the American designer Sandra Zhao’s packing list was straightforward: “I wanted something I could shove in a backpack, that wouldn’t look like I’d just shoved it in a backpack.” Zhao, a New York City transplant, was living in Nairobi, where it’s fast and cheap to have clothes tailored, so she designed the dress she had in mind: resistant to wrinkling, airy enough for the equatorial sun and long enough (in sleeves and skirt) to be culturally appropriate. The resulting piece — a tunic-style dress that’s fitted in the shoulders and loose through the body — hit all the marks. It also, remarkably, looked good. Zhao traveled in the dress; then she started living in it.

At a wedding later that year, Ashleigh Gersh Miller (another New Yorker who had recently relocated to Nairobi) saw Zhao in the dress and was immediately drawn to it. “It was the week of my due date with my second child,” Miller says, so the loose, forgiving cut appealed. (“It doesn’t look like a muumuu,” says Zhao, “But it kind of feels like one.”) The two struck up a conversation. Soon after, they went into business.

“We’re both really short, but you could be six feet tall,” says Zhao.
“It looks good on everyone.”

Zuri, which launched online at shopzuri.com this year, is built on Zhao and Miller’s conviction that there’s one dress (indeed, “just one dress” is the brand’s tag line and hashtag) suitable for all purposes and people. “We’re both really short, but you could be six feet tall,” says Zhao. “It looks good on everyone.” They attribute this “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”-like adaptability to the structured top and an ample skirt that floats away from the body and hits just around the knee. “It’s just a flattering cut.”

The design of the dress has changed only slightly from Zhao’s first iteration. In response to feedback from friends, they’ve lengthened the sleeves (making it possible to tie the dress around one’s waist as a skirt) and added pockets. Buttons run down the front, so it can be worn as a jacket. “Personally, I like to wear it over pants,” says Miller.