*HEAT KLAXON* Summer has LANDED! Whether you're off on your holidays soon or staying on home turf and doing the festival circuit this summer (and why not when the weather’s like this?) we'd love to see where you're taking your woven basket bags.
Still looking for The One? Shop the collection here.
Our woven basket bags are the perfect accessory for the style-conscious and the ethically-minded, whether you're more of a beach-dweller, market-shopper, yoga-bunny or festival-goer. They’re ideal for slinging over your shoulder and keeping all your essentials in one place, and not only practical – they’re all a little bit gorgeous too.
Unique wool and sisal basket bag shared by @sylviassparkles
Beautifully Unique
Most pieces in The Basket Room's basket bag collection are complete one-offs, produced by highly skilled artisans creating to their own individual designs and colourways: made once, sold once. Depending on the design, these basket bags can take up to six days to complete. Fast fashion this is NOT.
EKUNDU basket bag sitting pretty in @alicecopywriter's garden - and available online
Inspired by tribal patterns and featuring bright, bold colours, our shoulder bags are hand woven by skilled members of the Kamba tribe in rural Kenya. For those new to the way we do things, we partner with over 1500 weavers across Kenya, Ghana, Zimbabwe & Tanzania – mainly members of rural weaving cooperatives - for whom basket weaving provides a reliable, supplementary income.
One-off wool and sisal basket bag shared by @puptartlondon
Known originally as ‘kiondos’ (kee-yon/-dohs) these basket bags are adaptations of home storage baskets which were traditionally woven by mothers as wedding gifts for their daughters. This art was for centuries passed down the female line in Kenyan families, but kiondo weaving was a declining craft in Kenya until very recently. Wearing a woven basket bag makes you a guardian of this remarkable art.
Just a handful of bags in the collection are repeat designs (where more than one is available), including the extremely popular HALIMA, which was featured in British Vogue's centenary issue in June 2016. The mottled effect achieved in our cloud design basket bags (where the sisal grass is dip dyed and tie dyed) means that although we produce a number of these at once, every one is different to the next.
Last summer we collaborated with Jigsaw to produce a small collection of woven basket bags and clutches, produced by the same Kenyan weavers who make all our other basket bags. The Jigsaw basket bag is a stylish beach companion whilst the sisal clutches are great for summer weddings and balmy nights out. Like what you see? We still have a couple available and some of them are in our SALE!
Ethically Sourced
Some of our basket bags are woven purely from hand-dyed sisal grass (indigenous to Kenya) whilst others are produced from a mixture of dyed and natural sisal, and wool. The coloured yarns used to weave these particular bags – all unique one-offs - are typically sourced from second-hand clothes markets where knitted jumpers are purchased, unraveled into separate balls of wool, and then woven using a traditional twining method. Those buttery-soft cow-hide straps you see? This leather is a by-product of the food industry, in further commitment to sustainability and style.
Round Basket Bags
We're thrilled to announce the arrival of PANDE ZOTE to our basket bag collection, currently available to pre-order for delivery from early July since our first batch flew off the shelves in a matter of hours! These round basket bags are this summer's must-have accessory, and ours are ethically woven in Kenya from palm leaf to create a chic, sturdy basket with an intricate, spiralled weave.
We love seeing where our customers take their basket bags and how they style them. Our woven treasures have been spotted in Marrakech, Antigua and The Maldives already this summer and we can’t wait to see where else they end up. Want to share your basket with the world? Use our hashtag, #mybasketroom, and spread that beautiful basket love!
