BOUJO HAKE was bought to life by a female duo with a combined plethora of skills, knowledge and expertise, united by a belief in thoughtful design and the quiet value of beauty.
Kathrin began her career with a rigorous three-year apprenticeship in dressmaking and tailoring, graduating with a prestigious Industrial Award for outstanding achievement. This led her to Schloß Eller, an elite fashion school in Germany, and eventually to Head Designer roles at BOSS and JOOP!, where she spent a combined twenty years doing what she does best: refining, questioning and perfecting. Consultancy work for smaller fashion houses followed.
Long before sustainability became a buzzword (and long before anyone could quite agree what it meant), Kathrin was already acutely aware of fashion’s environmental impact and was often the awkward voice in the room asking uncomfortable questions. Over more than thirty years in the industry, she has seen genuine progress, persistent contradictions and a great deal of green rhetoric. Today, she works as an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins and volunteers as a qualified England Athletics Coach.
Nadia’s career took a less linear route. After a French degree at Warwick University, she joined The Prince’s Trust, advising fledgling businesses on marketing in the pre-social-media age (when “content” was still just a word). Alongside this, she worked with young offenders at Feltham Prison, holding conversations centred on possibility, confidence and life beyond the system.
She later worked at Amnesty International on the Prisoners of Conscience programme, across direct marketing and copywriting, with a highlight being an interview with John Hurt about his film Shooting Dogs. A postgraduate diploma in Periodical Journalism followed, enabling her to realise a long-held ambition to become a theatre critic, which in turn led to a business development role at the Almeida Theatre. Alongside her arts career, Nadia completed a one-year diploma in biochemistry - attempting to keep alive a faint but stubborn dream of becoming a doctor (the heartbeat remains).
This was when she met Kathrin.
Their beginnings could not have been more different - Kathrin growing up in a mining village in Essen, Nadia in urban Willesden Green - yet they bonded over a shared aesthetic and a mutual dislike of anything overworked. Their references sit somewhere between the freedom of the 1970s and the tomboy, minimalist sensibility of the 1990s: clothes that feel lived-in, quietly confident and never shouty.
The idea for the brand began with a simple frustration: the absence of a genuinely good wireless bra. At the time, wanting something comfortable, supportive and effortlessly sexy -without excessive padding, wiring or persuasion - felt almost radical. The no-bra bra. Liberation, minus the manifesto.
From there, the vision expanded naturally into a wardrobe of essential pieces - the everyday staples they had both worn and searched for over the years.
Bringing together their distinct yet complementary skills, Nadia and Kathrin created BOUJO HAKE: an understated, minimal luxury brand rooted in craft, clarity and purpose.
