The Heritage Line, showcased July 2025 at Rip the Runway-Columbus, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, not in a studio, but in the bustling markets where artistry is life and heritage breathes through every stall. I walked those aisles alone, the air was alive with incense, accents, rhythm and the hum of ancestral presence. I felt grounded, like I belonged here.
In those markets, heritage was not something abstract or locked in museums, it was tangible. I felt it in cow horn, carved smooth by generations of hands. I saw it in bronze pendants etched with spirals that whispered prayers. I held it in coral branches glowing red like embers, and in trade beads that carried the echoes of journeys across deserts and oceans.
I didn’t choose these materials. They chose me. Each piece seemed to call out, reminding me that adornment has always been more than beauty. It has been shield, ritual, and identity. I gathered them not as objects, but as fragments of memory, carrying the weight of stories I promised to honor and reimagine.
Back in my studio, the Heritage Line took form. Every mask became a sentinel, every spiral an unbroken cycle, every bead a note in a larger song. What began as a marketplace encounter in Nairobi became a covenant between past and present, a bridge that allows you, the wearer, to step into that lineage.
To own a piece from the Heritage Line is to hold a fragment of Nairobi’s soul, reimagined as wearable ceremony. It is to carry with you not just jewelry, but a story, a memory, and a living connection to ancestry.
This is what makes the Heritage Line rare. It cannot be replicated, because it is not only designed, it is lived.
From Nairobi’s markets to your body: memory made visible, heritage reborn.
