ISLI means love in Berber.
The name was chosen by our founder, Karima Bidar, and it was not a marketing decision taken in a room with a whiteboard. She grew up between two cultures and never accepted having to choose between them. A Berber word, carried by a studio that draws in Paris, holds both at once without having to explain itself.
Two places, one brief
Morocco gives the colour. Not colour as an accent, but colour as a starting point: the saturated blues and greens you see on a door in Casablanca, the orange of late afternoon on a wall. France gives the restraint. Clean geometry, a silhouette that stops where it should, nothing added because it could be.
Held apart, those two instincts cancel each other out. Held together, they produce the tension that is still the brief behind every piece we release. A shape that is bold enough to be seen across a room, and quiet enough to be worn on an ordinary Tuesday.
Why a word rather than a story
Berber, or Amazigh, is spoken across North Africa and it predates every border drawn on top of it. Choosing a Berber word rather than a French or an Arabic one was a way of pointing at something older than the question of which country a studio belongs to.
It also has the advantage of being short, and of meaning something warm. A name you can say in any accent.
What it commits us to
A name that means love sets a standard that is uncomfortable to live up to. It means we cannot treat the people who make the pieces as a supply line. Everything is cut and assembled by hand in Casablanca, by people we know by name. It means we cannot treat material as disposable, which is why we work almost entirely with leather that already had a first life.
It also means we release small runs rather than large ones, and accept that a colour we love will run out and not come back.
You can read the longer version on our story, or start with the pieces themselves in earrings and shoulder bags.