Meet The Makers | WE ARE ROXAS

We Are Roxas are one of the most exciting creative duos at work in Marrakech right now. We sat down with co-founder Ruthi Orlin to talk about creativity, ceramics and being an entrepreneur.

What happens when your career as a hands-on creative morphs into days spent looking at spreadsheets and computers? Well you either remain glued to your keyboard or make a radical life change. 

Ruthi Orlin chose the latter. 

And since starting Marrakech-based ceramics brand We Are Roxas with her Moroccan business partner Anas, she’s rediscovered and redefined herself.

‘I’ve been able to rebel, be free and do what I love once more,’ says Ruthi as we talk in the studio where she and Anas hand-make their unique pottery and accessories. ‘It’s taught me to be brave again.’

Ruthi was born and raised in South Africa where she studied fashion design before specialising in accessories during a Masters in Utrecht and the renowned Institut Francais de la Mode in Paris. After a spell in London running a market stall selling pieces she’d designed, Ruthi entered a competition sponsored by a new fashion website. It was called ASOS.

They were looking for the design talent of the future. Ruthi entered, won and her corporate life began.  

It was 2008 and back then Ruthi designed each piece for ASOS and created the prototypes by hand. Over the next five years, she grew the ASOS accessory range before moving to Finery London to head up jewellery and then going freelance. Designing for high street brands and travelling internationally to oversee production, the fashion world was rapidly changing around Ruthi. Production went even more global, buyers used data to dictate aesthetics and her work became more and more computerised.

Then Covid hit and, with most of the production Ruthi oversaw now in China which shut down completely, the forced hiatus forced her to reassess. 

‘Slowly, I realised that I had to work with my hands again,’ says Ruthi. ‘I’d had enough of jewellery but had no idea what to do instead. Then my cousin told me to book a ticket to Marrakech because I’d visited for weekends in the past so I just impulsively booked a ticket and arrived without a plan. It was a city of makers and somehow I felt deep down that a path would open up.’

As soon as travel restrictions were lifted, Ruthi arrived in Morocco and plunged into the souks, artisans and medina. On her third day she met a ceramic maker called Anas.

‘I’d had an idea to transfer some drawings I’d done onto plates and we decided to spend a day together at his studio,’ says Ruthi. ‘We met there a couple of days later, started experimenting and the creative connection between us was pretty instant. I knew how rare it was. 

 

‘The first piece we made together was a vase and I blended our names to sign it – Ruthi Orlan ‘x’ Anas. In that moment, We Are Roxas was born.’  

Two years on, their range now includes vases, candlesticks, giant totems, plates and cups. But these are no ordinary ceramics. Vivid and colourful, they are all united by the words, slogans and drawings that characterise every We Are Roxas piece.

‘Our plan was to merge South African and Moroccan culture so we’d take anything from favourite sayings to personal jokes and put it all into the ceramics. We were also both united in wanting to make our pieces fun and positive because after so long churning out mass production jewellery, Anas reminded me of how I used to be. 

 

‘I’d spent so long being told how to design according to what would sell and he was beautifully uncompromising. His attitude is ‘This is what we love. This is what we make.’ And it emboldened me.’

That commitment to their unique aesthetic has seen Ruthie and Anas co-create a core range of one-off pieces that are on sale in the El Fenn boutique. They now also have a team of 25 potters creating larger commercial orders, always handmade, always with the We Are Roxas twist, for businesses in the UK and Europe. 

So does Ruthi regret leaving corporate life? 

She looks around her brightly coloured studio, at the prototypes and creative experiments packing the shelves around the walls, some of which worked, some of which didn’t, but all a one-off design created solely by her and Anas.

‘Never,’ she says with a smile. 

Shop We Are Roxas, exclusively at the El Fenn Boutique. We are open from 11am to 10pm every day.