Swiss Designer Sport: Berne's Answer to Sport, Fashion and Everyday Life

Swiss Designer Sport began taking shape in Berne in 2017, before being formally established as a design house the following year. Behind it stand two founders, Rahel Jana Africa and Ross Roy Africa, working from the same studio to build a label that sits deliberately between sport, fashion and daily life rather than choosing just one lane. The brand, known by its initials SDS®, has since organised itself around two distinct lines that speak to two different moods within the same idea of movement.

The Berne Beginning

The story starts in the Swiss capital, where the brand was developed in 2017 and formally established as a design house in 2018. There is no long founding myth here, no relocation story or change of direction to recount — just a studio in Berne, two founders, and a decision to build something that didn’t have to choose between sportswear and fashion. That decision has stayed the throughline of the brand ever since, expressed through its two current product lines.

Two Lines, One Studio

Swiss Designer Sport organises its output around Women in Sport and RE-SEARCH®. Both are designed in the same Bernese studio, but they pull in different directions. Women in Sport, as the name suggests, is the more overtly athletic of the two, built around sport as an activity and a daily practice. RE-SEARCH®, on the other hand, looks backwards to look forwards: according to the brand, it is sportswear with a heritage feel, drawing on the history and culture of sport rather than simply its performance side. Together, the two lines let the brand address people who want something for training and people who want something that references sport without necessarily being worn for it — sometimes, presumably, the same person on different days.

What the Brand Stands For

Swiss Designer Sport describes itself as a design house that combines sport, fashion and everyday life, rather than treating them as separate categories that occasionally overlap. It is a positioning statement as much as a design brief: the brand is not trying to be purely technical sportswear, nor purely fashion that borrows sporty shapes, but something built at the intersection of the two. The RE-SEARCH® line makes that intersection most explicit, described by the brand as modern heritage sportswear inspired by the history and culture of sport — a way of treating sport as material for design, not just as a function to serve.

Right Now

The brand has a new product release scheduled for launch on 25 September. Alongside that, its physical store has moved to being open every Saturday, giving people a fixed weekly window to visit in person rather than an occasional or by-appointment arrangement. Together, the two pieces of news point to a brand in an active phase — refreshing its range while also making itself easier to reach off-screen.

For a Swiss Reader

Swiss Designer Sport is based in Berne, which places it firmly within Switzerland’s German-speaking region, roughly midway between Zurich and Lausanne on the map. The brand’s physical store is now open every Saturday, which is useful information for anyone based in or passing through the capital who wants to see the Women in Sport and RE-SEARCH® lines in person rather than only online.