The Story of Jaja
In November 2017, a young woman named Nikki was taking her mom's housekeeper home - one of perhaps three times she ever made that trip. It wasn't a routine journey. But on that particular afternoon, in the Langrug informal settlement just outside Franschhoek, she noticed something on the side of the road.
A six-week-old kitten. He had been run over by a car. He had been lying there for nearly two days.
Nikki scooped him up and rushed him to the vet.
For a while, it wasn't clear if he would survive.
But he did.
designed to care
She named him Jaja. He came home with a slight crook at the end of his tail - curling back on itself like a candy cane - and a distinctive swirl marking on his coat. Small reminders of where he'd been. He carried them lightly.
What Nikki couldn't have known was that she had just rescued the animal who would one day carry her name forward into the world.
Jaja grew into the kind of cat who doesn't sit next to you. He sits on you. If you're working, he climbs into your lap. If you're resting, he finds his way onto your chest. He has always wanted to be close - always seeking warmth, always choosing people.
He lived between the homes of people who loved him deeply.
Fiercely protected. Deeply loved.
Like many animals who carry early trauma in their bodies, Jaja eventually developed an anxiety that triggered an autoimmune response. He began to over-groom - licking himself raw.
Rather than a cone or a collar, the solution came through improvisation. A sock, cut and shaped into a small protective vest. Something to cover the affected areas while his skin healed.
Jaja didn't fight it.
He wore it every day. So naturally, and so continuously, that the vest slowly stopped being a medical intervention and started becoming something else entirely - a wardrobe.
Something considered. Something his.
That small act of care was the beginning of Jaja Binksy Atelier.
The brand itself carries pieces of Jaja within it.
The swirl pattern used throughout the collections comes from the distinctive marking on his coat. The signature J symbol echoes the curve of his kinked tail. Each capsule collection is released like a signed print, marked with a drop date - because what began as care for one small animal slowly became something more.
Something worth signing.
The girl who stopped
Nikki was 23 when she found Jaja. She was the kind of person who would notice a kitten on the side of a road - and do something about it. That was simply who she was.
She was complex and multidimensional. An empath and occasionally a force of nature. Androgynous before it was a category, moving between worlds with an ease that made people feel seen. She wore plaid like a signature - her hoodie, black and white tartan with a thread of red, was practically a uniform.
She and her mom had been building something together long before it had a name. A business Nikki would eventually inherit. A legacy, designed to outlast any single person's working life. They were early. They were excited.
On 27 November 2022, Nikki passed away suddenly. She was 28.
The question that followed was not whether to continue. It was how to continue in a way that kept Nikki present - not as a ghost, but as the soul of something real.
The hoodie still exists. It is preserved. The black and white tartan with the red thread - Nikki's signature - became the direct design inspiration for the Heritage Collection 06-26. Her mom recognised it only after she stepped back and looked. It had happened subconsciously. The way grief sometimes does its own designing, if you let it.
Jaja now lives with his Nana in Johannesburg. He was flown from Cape Town after Nikki passed - he needed to be where family was. His over-grooming worsened in the months that followed. Grief, made physical. Nana responded the only way she knew how: she made him more vests. Better ones.
The brand was always going to happen. It just didn't know yet what it was carrying.
A letter from the founder
Some brands begin with a business plan.
This one began with a small injured kitten, and a young woman who couldn't drive past.
I have been building things my whole life - businesses, projects, structures designed to outlast their designers. It's what engineers do. We think in systems, in decades, in what holds. I built Studiomall Designs the year Nikki's father passed, so I could be her mother and her provider at the same time. I built EnsO Earth because I believed that care - properly designed - could become a force for regeneration.
Jaja Binksy Atelier is the third thing I've built from nothing. But it's the first one that built itself.
It started with a sock.
Jaja needed protection for his skin. I improvised. I hacked doggy outfits. I ordered custom pieces and tested them obsessively - fit, fabric, movement, comfort - for two years before I even considered them a product. Jaja was my quality control, my model, and my chief creative director. He sat on the laptop. He still does.
What I didn't realise, until much later, was that the tartan I kept gravitating towards was Nikki's hoodie. Her signature. I hadn't made a conscious decision. It had made itself.
That's when I understood what this brand actually was.
Nikki and I had been planning this for years. She was going to inherit it, grow it, make it her own. We were early. We were excited. And then, in November 2022, she was gone.
I sat with that question for a long time: is this the end, or a new beginning?
This is the new beginning.
The Heritage Collection 06-26 launches in June 2026 - what would have been Nikki's 32nd birthday month. The tartan is hers. The J is Jaja's. And the philosophy is something the three of us built together without knowing we were building it: that care, expressed consistently and with intention, can grow into something that outlasts any of us.
Designed to care is not just a tagline. It is the thing Nikki did when she stopped her car. It is the thing I do every time I make Jaja a new vest. It is what I hope this brand does for every animal who wears it, and every person who chooses to bring them into the same story.
Welcome to the Atelier.
- Nana
Care should be shared
Every collection from Jaja Binksy Atelier contributes a portion of proceeds to Positive +Paws, supporting animal welfare organisations that give other animals the chance Nikki gave Jaja.
Because sometimes the smallest act of stopping can grow into something much larger.