DFD Festival: WAIZPARISWORK

Waizi Houston Shelukindo is an up-and-coming artist who stands out in the fashion world for his creative versatility and unique style. He combines traditional African elements with modern European influences, making his designs both culturally meaningful and contemporary. His work is characterized by vibrant colors, innovative cuts and a strong message that celebrates diversity and identity. Waizi Houston Shelukindo manages to use fashion as a form of expression for cultural stories and personal identity, making him an exciting representative of contemporary fashion. His creative vision brings a breath of fresh air to the European fashion world and shows how global influences can merge in a stylish way.

Waizi Houston Shelukindo was born in 1979 in Lushoto, a town in the north-east of Tanzania, which is the capital of the district of the same name in the Tanga region. He grew up as the youngest child of a farming family who traditionally cultivated fields and stored the yields primarily to secure their own food supply and offered the surplus for sale.

Even as a young boy, Waizi loved to look at clothes and often changed his own. He developed a longing to design clothes according to his own wishes, to stand out from others in the way he dressed.

His fashion design career began in 1997 with technical training as a tailor. In 2001, he moved to Zanzibar, where he continued to develop his passion for fashion. Influences for his diverse work come from times when he lived in South Africa for several years from 2003 to 2007 and later during the Corona period in Nigeria, in addition to close collaborations with designers from the UK and Madagascar.

He became known in East Africa as a multifaceted artist for his contributions to fashion design, music and as an event organizer.

Again and again his path led him back to Zanzibar, where he combined East African music and traditional fashion design with international luxury design and according to his vision is now exploring the intercontinental level in Europe with a global branding WAIZPARISWORK.

His mission is to enrich the men's and women's fashion world with African soul and to transform his and his customers' design dreams into garments that are stylish, tell a story, are wearable and live on the wearer's skin in the form of real material.

His philosophy and driving force behind his work is:

"I don't design clothes, I design dreams that live forever"

As part of DFD 2025, Waizi Houston Shelukindo will have a stand on Schadowstraße and is looking forward to presenting his styles to visitors!