Titty morris’ 10 years of daring in the fashion biz

In Life, you sometimes need to celebrate your milestones as you look back tracing your career journey so that you can remind yourself of your true purpose in the world. Celebrating her 10-year anniversary in the fashion industry, Titty Morris, founder of Katty Collection, reminisced on the good times in her career that were at times made more meaningful with the challenges that came along.

On March 19, Titty held a grand celebration of her 10 years in fashion designing at Serena hotel, Dar es Salaam. The event was aptly graced by dignitaries and household names in the fashion scene.

Titty sat down with The Beat and narrated her bitter-sweet journey in Tanzania’s fashion industry.

“My passion for fashion stemmed from a very young age where I had a predilection for decorating things with flowers and ornaments. I recall I had a habit of asking some of my relatives for permission so that I could decorate their places in a way that seemed beautiful and emanated elegancy in my eyes,” Titty recalls.

On the other hand, her mother is one of the idols she looked up to in terms of fashion sense. Titty’s mother loved beautifying herself with neck-turning designs that were made out of Kanga, Vitenge and Batiki. She is the lead influence who made Titty focus on having an African kind of brand that makes clothes out of African fabric.

Despite having a passion for fashion, Titty later opted for accountancy as a career. After she explored the finance world in different institutions, she later on decided to answer to her true calling; fashion designing.

“I was lucky that I started my brand after years of saving for capital that enabled me stand tall and make my dream a reality. I recall that I started putting money aside for this business when I was still a high school student. Back in those days in order to save money, you had to write your name and signature instead of swiping your card at an ATM,” she smiles.

In her last formal job at Stanbic Bank where she served as an accountant, Titty’s leave days were two-faced. She would tour different countries for the fun of it, but she was also keen to take note of the places that sell fashion materials especially Vitenge and at times, she bought the materials and travelled with them back to Tanzania. She would then sell the fabric to her close people and colleagues at the bank.

“I would Google places that sell African fashion materials before I visited those countries. This helped me to build contact with the people that understood the fashion industry and they had the nose for high quality materials,” she narrates.

Titty had long term career goals; one of them was to quit her job and establish her own business that she would operate together with a number of people.

“When I quit my job, I first started working with tailors since I did not know ways around a tailoring machine, neither did I know how to measure the materials. I would give the tailors designs I wanted alongside the particular materials that were to be used to make the designs. Soon afterwards, disappointments from the tailors started clouding my work. It was honestly discouraging,” she details.

There were times Titty’s designs would be wrongly tailored, other times the orders missed set deadlines.

“At one point I was advised to start tailoring on my own with the help of experienced talents whose knew their way around fabric. This made me picture a brand where clothes are made from scratch by own hands. I wanted that, so I began taking informal yet practical lessons from tailors, and here I am,” she proudly says.

Her brand now makes variety of clothes for both men and women whereas Titty alongside her team make ready-made clothes as well as give room for clients to suggest a design they would want to wear.

Due to Titty’s hard work, Katty Collection which is abbreviated out of her name as well as her daughters’ names, Aika and Alice took home an award for the category of ‘361 degree designer’ in Swahili Fashion Week 2021 competitions.

“Tanzania’s fashion industry is still young compared to other countries in and out of Africa. In our country, tailors are not open to suggestions and opinions of other people.

Little do they know that in the fashion world, a person may have the best sense of fashion but they may also not know their way around a sewing or tailoring machine, this does not make them any less experienced,” she reveals.

According to her, another challenge is that many people in the fashion chain would rather buy materials from foreign countries than in Tanzania because of the lack of quality in materials produced in the local factories.

“This has hindered Tanzania to compete with other countries in terms of fashion because even the materials produced in the country do not stand a chance,” Titty says..

She advises young people who aspire to make their names in the fashion industry to explore their passion in a unique manner while working hard.

“When a person likes their work, it becomes easy to turn challenges into lessons. Young people should not be swayed away by other people’s passions. You may be attracted to their successes, but you have not seen the ugliest parts they have gone through to get there,” Titty emphasizes.