The Story Behind Bhooki's Ankara Prints: A More Meaningful Christmas Gift

Most dog gifts under the tree this Christmas are picked for colour or price, and forgotten by February. If you want to give something with an actual story behind it, that story is worth understanding properly, not tacked on afterwards as a selling point.

Where the fabric actually comes from

Ankara, the printed cotton at the centre of every Bhooki design, has a more complicated past than most gift buyers realise. The pattern making technique did not start in West Africa. It began as a Dutch attempt to mechanise Indonesian batik dyeing in the nineteenth century, using roller printed resin as a resist before dyeing, then washing the resist out and layering on further colour by hand blocking or roller printing again. V&A records note that the technique's intended market, Indonesia, largely rejected it, since the resin was prone to cracking and produced visible defects the original batik did not have.

That rejection is what sent the fabric to West Africa instead. V&A collection records describe how a genuine market for the cloth emerged there in the 1890s, and how the relationship between buyer and manufacturer became genuinely collaborative rather than one directional: local sellers in West Africa told European merchants which colours and motifs were selling, and manufacturers adapted their designs in response.

One V&A holding, a 1948 dress fabric known as ABC or Alphabet and made by the Calico Printers' Association in Manchester, illustrates this well. Its pattern of stacked alphabet blocks was designed specifically for the West African market and is understood to allude to the value of education, a meaning chosen for that audience rather than imposed on it from Europe.

By the early twentieth century a cheaper single sided printing method had replaced the original resin resist process for most production, and decades later, independence movements across West Africa saw manufacturing shift onto the continent itself, with African owned businesses competing directly with the original British and Dutch firms. Today's ankara carries all of that layered history: European industrial origin, West African commercial and creative input, and eventual African ownership of the trade.

Why the pattern has a name, and why that name matters

This is not decoration for its own sake. According to Young V&A, individual wax print designs are often given names tied to a saying, an event, or a social message, and the same pattern can carry a different name and a different meaning depending on where in West Africa it is sold. A design used in one country to mark family unity at a gathering can travel to a neighbouring country and be known under a completely different name, carrying an entirely different message. The ABC pattern mentioned above is a clear example: a design deliberately built around a meaning the buyer would recognise and value, not a random arrangement of letters.

The print on a collar or bandana is not neutral in the same way. Somewhere in its history, someone chose that pattern to say something specific, even if that meaning has since been simplified or lost in translation as the fabric travelled further from its original market.

What that means when you are choosing a Christmas gift

If you are buying for a dog owner who already has drawers full of plain black and brown accessories, a printed design with an actual history behind it stands apart from most of what is available on the high street. Bhooki's dog collar collection and bandana range are both individually cut and sewn by hand, so no two pieces are exactly alike, which matters if part of the appeal is giving something that will not turn up on someone else's dog at the park.

One practical note if you are buying for a dog you do not own yourself: it is worth checking with the owner directly on sizing rather than guessing, since collars and leads are not standardised across brands the way clothing sizes roughly are. If you are at all unsure, an adjustable design gives more room for error than a fixed size, and most owners will not mind being asked.

Choosing well this Christmas

A gift with a genuine story behind it does not need much dressing up to feel considered. Understanding where the fabric comes from, and that the pattern itself was chosen to mean something to the people who first bought it, is enough to make an accessory feel less like a stocking filler and more like something the recipient will actually want to use. Bhooki's lead collection follows the same approach: authentic Ankara fabric, handmade in the UK, with the fabric's own history intact rather than flattened into a generic label.

Whichever piece you choose this Christmas, it is worth knowing what you are actually giving. It is not just a print. It is cloth with a documented, complicated history, carrying names and meanings that predate the product entirely, and a trade history that shifted from European hands into African ones over the course of the twentieth century.