Two Sisters, One Loom
Shema Wears is a small Addis Ababa house built on a big inheritance — Ethiopia's handloom. This is how it began, and how every piece is made.
Our Story
The cloth we grew up in
Shema (ሸማ) is Ethiopia's handwoven cotton cloth. For centuries it has been spun, dyed and woven on wooden looms — worn to church and to weddings, wrapped around newborns, passed between generations. Everyone knows its softness. Fewer think about the hands behind it.
Two sisters in Addis Ababa did. They founded Shema Wears to bring the handloom into the modern wardrobe — where tradition meets modern fashion, and neither one gives way to the other.
They work directly with artisan hand-weavers, the masters who carry this craft in their fingers. Together they choose the threads, the weights and the borders, so the weave stays honest and the weavers stay at the centre of the story.
Every piece is then cut and finished in the sisters' own studio at the AG Grace Building, Haya Hulet. Small batches. Careful hands. Cloth with somewhere to go.
From Thread to Garment
How a piece of shema is made
Spin
Fine cotton thread, spun by hand until it is even, strong and impossibly soft.
Weave
The wooden loom takes over — a patient rhythm of shuttle and thread. A single length of shema can take weeks.
Tibeb
The woven border of diamonds and colour. ጥበብ means artistry — the name is earned.
Tailor
Each cloth is cut, fitted and finished in the sisters' studio in Addis Ababa.
The Craft
Made with the weavers, not just by them
A handloom is not a machine you switch on. It is a frame of wood and thread that answers to the person sitting at it — their pace, their eye, their years of practice. That is why no two lengths of shema are ever quite the same.
The weavers we partner with learned the craft the way it has always been passed down: by watching, then by doing. We go to them directly, plan each collection with them, and give the loom the time it asks for.
When you wear Shema Wears, you wear their hours as much as ours. We think that is the point.
Wear the story
Every kemis, netela and scarf begins on a wooden loom in Addis Ababa. Find the piece that ends with you.
Shop the collection