How Adam Khafif Built —andever: A Uniform For Those Who Move Between Worlds
The Travel Uniform collection combines the comfort and functionality of American sportswear with the versatility and elegance of Moroccan craft
Travel has long shaped the way clothing is designed, yet few contemporary wardrobes acknowledge the reality of how people move today. A single day can begin on a flight, unfold through meetings, continue onto a production set and end around a dinner table in another city. The distinctions between work, leisure and ceremony have become increasingly fluid, while much of fashion continues to treat them as separate occasions requiring separate wardrobes.
For Adam Khafif, this tension became impossible to ignore after more than a decade spent travelling with his life and business partner, journalist and filmmaker Noor Tagouri. Together they navigated an existence defined by constant movement, crossing continents as naturally as they moved between boardrooms, editorial shoots, interviews and public speaking engagements. Clothing was expected to keep pace with each transition without demanding attention of its own.
“I started —andever for those who move between worlds,” Khafif says. The idea was informed as much by his upbringing as by his professional life. Raised between Moroccan, Italian and American cultures, he spent every summer in Morocco where a different philosophy of dress quietly revealed itself through everyday life.
“Growing up Moroccan, spending every summer in Morocco, I always had a reference: the Moroccan djellaba moves through every context of daily life, the same garment in a different fabric for different occasions: weddings, work, at home, to the market and especially on travels.”
Rather than representing a single tradition or ceremonial garment, the djellaba embodied continuity. Its form remained familiar while fabric, weight and finish shifted to suit circumstance. The garment belonged as naturally in the marketplace as it did at family celebrations, suggesting that versatility could emerge not from compromise but from thoughtful refinement. “I wanted to take that spirit and build something for the way we, and many others, are actually living—dynamic, versatile, mixed-media lives,” Khafif says.
That ambition became the foundation of —andever’s Travel Uniform, a collection developed over several years through observation, repeated wear and continual refinement. Khafif describes it as an attempt to unite two design languages that rarely intersect.
“Over a number of years I developed the Travel Uniform, I was looking for combining the comfort and functionality of American sportswear with the versatility and elegance of Moroccan craft,” he says. The resulting collection is understated in appearance yet remarkably considered in construction. Relaxed pullovers and wide-leg trousers are cut with enough ease to accompany long journeys while maintaining the composure expected in more formal settings. Their silhouettes remain intentionally uncomplicated, allowing woven textures, handloom stripes and subtle variations in weight to provide distinction rather than ornament. Sheer interpretations sit alongside densely woven cottons, offering garments suited to different climates without altering the underlying form.
Throughout the collection, proportion is balanced with restraint, producing clothing that feels equally comfortable in motion and at rest. The accompanying Balgha travel slippers reinterpret Morocco’s traditional leather footwear with a softened contemporary profile, while naturally tanned leather totes and beach bags pair generous functionality with meticulous hand-finishing, allowing everyday objects to carry the same sense of permanence as the garments themselves.
The collection’s relationship with Morocco extends well beyond aesthetic reference. For Khafif, authenticity required building the brand alongside the communities whose craftsmanship had inspired it from the beginning. “What I didn’t want to do was what I’d watched the industry do for years: use Morocco as a moodboard without ever really going there, literally and figuratively,” he says
What I didn’t want to do was what I’d watched the industry do for years: use Morocco as a moodboard without ever really going there, literally and figuratively.
Adam Khafif
Instead, he returned to the artisans whose work he had admired throughout his childhood. “I found the artisans and weavers and leather workers I’d admired my whole life and asked them to create with me, to bring a contemporary voice to traditional craft.”
Every garment is handmade in Morocco using Sousdi cotton, hand-loom weaving, traditional Sfifa embroidery and naturally tanned leather. Production follows the same philosophy. Campaigns are photographed in Morocco with Moroccan photographers, stylists, craftspeople and creative teams, allowing the people who preserve these traditions to remain visible participants in the story being told. “The people who inspired the work are in the work.”
The collection was never conceived as a commercial exercise from the outset. Before inviting customers into the process, Khafif created a personal wardrobe for himself and wore it almost exclusively for several years. “I made myself a personal set first and wore it for three to four years,” he says. “On buses, planes, meetings, dinners, every transitional moment a creative finds themselves in.”
Those years became a period of quiet testing. The garments travelled repeatedly before they were ever offered for sale, evolving through lived experience rather than seasonal deadlines. Early versions appeared organically in Noor Tagouri’s editorial work, including a Morocco story published by Vogue Arabia. When Khafif felt the collection had reached the standard he envisioned, approximately 100 friends and family placed pre-orders, creating the brand’s first production run. That initial community soon expanded to include creatives such as Timothy Goodman, Seth Godin, Kimberly Drew, Lina Makkoul, Nadeska Alexis and Sophia Li.
Although —andever was born online, Khafif has remained interested in restoring something increasingly absent from contemporary retail: discovery. He says as he “was developing the brand, one of the core intentions was to bring back the thrill of discovery that Internet, and social media have flattened.”
This thinking led to Here & There Exclusives, a geolocation system through which selected pieces become available only when the customer is physically present in places that shaped the collection, including Morocco, New York, Massachusetts, Italy, France, Turkey and California. “To own one, you have to be somewhere,” Khafif says. “Ship anywhere, but be there when you purchase.”
The concept recalls an earlier era of travel, when objects carried memories not simply because of what they were, but because of where they had been found. Purchasing becomes part of the journey itself, anchoring the garment to a specific place and moment rather than reducing it to another item delivered anonymously to a doorstep.
That relationship between clothing and place also informs where the collection is encountered. Rather than pursuing traditional wholesale distribution, —andever has found its earliest retail homes within boutique hotels including Kasbah Bab Ourika in Morocco and Curio Faena in Miami, environments where travel, hospitality and discovery naturally converge.
Throughout the collection, movement is understood less as speed than as continuity. Heritage is carried forward through living craft, travel becomes a way of collecting experience rather than possessions, and clothing serves as the quiet thread connecting one place, one encounter and one chapter of life to the next.
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