Inside a house on sixtieth Avenue in East Oakland, you’ll discover longtime Oakland resident Rebecca Washington-Ogbebor carrying what she considers an off-the-cuff outfit: a protracted flowy gown with conventional African patterns in crimson, navy, and inexperienced, full with an identical headwrap.
A seamstress and clothes designer, Washington-Ogbebor sewed the gown and headwrap herself.
“After I began making clothes, I’d all the time get this spiritualness round me,” she mentioned. “It let me know that I didn’t have to evolve and do issues the best way the world wished me to do it—I might do it my manner.”
Wilsdom African Designs, 2557 sixtieth Ave. Open Monday from 12-6:30 p.m., Tuesday by way of Friday from 11 a.m.-6:30 p.m., and Saturday from 12-5:30 p.m. By appointment solely. Closed Sunday.
Washington-Ogbebor is the founder and proprietor of Wilsdom African Designs, a conventional African clothes boutique she runs out of her residence close to the Bancroft enterprise district. With materials sourced from Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, and different African international locations, she hand-crafts clothes for almost any event—bridal robes, commencement caps and stoles, dashikis, sarongs, and kufi caps, to call a couple of. She mentioned it takes her anyplace from sooner or later to every week to finish a gown.
Past clothes, Washington-Ogbebor’s store additionally sells earrings, Kwanzaa items, and wonder merchandise reminiscent of uncooked shea butter, African black cleaning soap, and physique oil.
The impetus for launching Wilsdom African Designs got here to her in 1990 when she would host “Tupperware events,” social gatherings whereby Tupperware consultants would showcase and promote the corporate’s newest merchandise. At these events, Washington-Ogbebor’s pals typically requested her the place she obtained her garments, which she sewed herself with textiles from Nigeria.
Seeing their curiosity as a brand new enterprise alternative, Washington-Ogbebor started internet hosting trend reveals to unveil her designs. She created attire, skirts, and headwraps and had two of her pals mannequin the garments at different folks’s homes.
“That’s how Wilsdom took impact—me doing Tupperware events, however [with] African clothes as a substitute,” she mentioned.
Phrase unfold of her work. She began promoting clothes out of a warehouse flea market on twenty third Avenue and East 14th Avenue, finally transferring her enterprise to Foothill Sq. in deep East Oakland.
In 2002, Washington-Ogbebor relocated her enterprise to earn a living from home so she might assist handle her 15 grandchildren. A lot of her grandchildren have modeled her clothes on the shop’s web site and helped her create Yelp, Etsy, and Fb pages.
“It’s not that I wish to be Rachel Zoe or Michael Kors or any well-known designer on the market. I’ve simply wished to handle my household,” she mentioned.
Through the years, she’s constructed up a loyal clientele throughout the nation. Her first massive order, she recalled, was for mudcloths for a Native American tribe in Utah for $1,200. She’s made commencement stoles for a lot of colleges, together with 100% School Prep in San Francisco, School Observe Oakland, Hayward Excessive Faculty, and Pasadena Metropolis School. She’s additionally sewn bereavement apparel for infants and adults who’ve died and face masks with conventional African patterns for hospitals and well being care professionals throughout the COVID-19 shutdowns.
Along with utilizing social media to advertise her small enterprise, most of Washington-Ogbebor’s clients have heard of her by way of phrase of mouth.
“I prefer to say I’m hidden, however not hiding,” she mentioned.
A lady of religion, Washington-Ogbebor mentioned the title of her enterprise got here to her in a “revelation from God.”
From the Louisiana bayous to the Oakland flats
Born in Natchitoches, Louisiana, Washington-Ogbebor was raised by her mom; grandfather, a member of the Choctaw Nation; and grandmother, whom she described as a “Southern belle.”
Whereas in elementary college, she moved together with her household throughout the nation to the Brookfield Village neighborhood of Oakland. The eldest of 5 youngsters, she attended Brookfield Elementary Faculty, Madison Park Academy, Castlemont Excessive Faculty, and Skyline Excessive Faculty.
“We had been capable of roam freely and play all through the entire block till the streetlights got here on,” mentioned Washington-Ogbebor, referring to her brother and three sisters.
At age 12, she realized easy methods to sew by observing her aunt. “My aunt was a full-figured lady, so she would make issues for herself and I’d be proper there together with her,” mentioned Washington-Ogbebor. “After I began stitching, it was simply pure. I can’t clarify it.”
Washington-Ogbebor isn’t any stranger to hardships. Rising up within the South, she was bullied for having completely different hair from different ladies at college. “I grew up on the lookout for my folks … with this pores and skin and hair, and I wasn’t seeing those that regarded like me,” she mentioned.
In January 2000, certainly one of her youngsters, Andre D. Stanley, was fatally stabbed at age 24, forsaking 5 youngsters. He was the primary murder sufferer that 12 months, in keeping with the Oakland Tribune.
Through the pandemic shutdowns, Washington-Ogbebor’s father and stepmother, each of whom she was near, died of COVID-19 eight days aside.
“It’s simply been a journey,” she mentioned, describing the deaths of her family members as “the heavens opening up.”
Along with “the spirit of [her] ancestors” giving her power, she mentioned, Washington-Ogbebor’s religion performs a significant position in her life. An ordained minister by way of the Residing Hope Gospel Ministries Worldwide, Washington-Ogbebor is a broadcast creator of 4 books, all of which element her life and religious journey.
Her newest guide, “Wilsdom, Dominion, and Energy: (A Full Circle),” is accompanied by a soundtrack that Braveness Ogbebor—her youngest son and an alumnus of Oakland Faculty for the Arts—wrote and composed himself.
Washington-Ogbebor hopes to unfold her message of religion, love, and hope. When she’s not engaged on clothes, she enjoys talking with youth and empowering them.
“I’m all the time ensuring that these younger individuals are doing one thing completely different with their lives,” she mentioned. “We don’t want extra jails and incarceration and deaths.”
Observe: This story has been corrected to determine Braveness Ogbebor as Washington-Ogbebor’s youngest son, not grandson.
