In recent years, terms like ‘change’, ‘equity’ and ‘redistribution’ have been freely bandied about — to such a degree that they’ve started to ring hollow. While the conversations in which they feature may be entirely well-meaning, what they culminate in invariably fails to measure up to the intentions they signify. It’s in response to this climate of inaction that Adesuwa Aighewi — the Nigerian-American activist, entrepreneur and model — has founded Legacy, a fairtrade marketplace and multidisciplinary brand that seeks to create a direct bridge between Africa’s cultural wealth and its producers, and a global audience.
“Legacy is the action that comes after my protests,” Adesuwa says, “after all the years of magazine talks, all the rallies, the -isms, after all the pleading for change.” A response to the personal conflicts and turmoils that she encountered navigating the fashion establishment, she felt compelled to create a network that circumnavigated systems in which exploitation was entrenched. “Rather than searching for somebody else’s answer to what was upsetting me, I chose to study the systems that I knew, and look at the aspects that actually worked for me and those around me. Legacy is the result of a combination of these systems in an attempt to create my own.”
Rather than a charitable mission, the ethos at Legacy’s core is to facilitate the creation of networks that allow those engaged in them to directly profit from their own work. Over the four years that she’s spent working on Legacy, this approach has seen her forge longstanding connections with artisans and craftspeople across West Africa, inviting them to translate their skills into creative freeform contexts. “The first step was to ask: ‘How can we play? How can we just experiment, design and come up with different things,” Adesuwa asks, unencumbered by the need to create product. The next, she continues, was to then connect these artisans working on the African continent with likeminded creatives around the world, bringing them together to develop “new languages that everyone involved can profit from, monetarily and creatively.”
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Today, Adesuwa presents Legacy’s first fruits — a collection of fine jewellery and accessories that are products of the global collaborative network she’s built, and which will soon be made available at auction. Chains and pendants, crafted in 24k gold and 99.6% pure silver, draw upon revered Nigerian symbols — the country’s national bird, the red eagle; the Oba of Benin, the Leopard King of the Benin Kingdom — and are crafted in collaboration with Thai metalsmiths. Elsewhere, a hoodie is rendered in coral beads historically only worn by Nigerian royalty, and a necklace is strung with silver beads, amethysts and vintage pearls.
While the visual motifs that feature in the collection may have specific cultural resonances, Adesuwa’s quick to point out the multiplicity of perspectives that culminate in the final pieces. “The symbolism you see is Nigerian,” she says, “but, in the case of the Legacy Necklace” — which features the aforementioned eagle pendant — “the chain and pendant size is the same that you’d find on a hip-hop medallion. And then the metalwork itself is Thai,” resulting in pieces that are products of meaningful transnational exchange.
As for the use of such high-spec materials in the pieces, the intention here wasn’t solely aesthetic. For Adesuwa, an essential feature of any Legacy product was that it could hold its value for years to come. “I wanted these to be things that you could love forever — that your kids could inherit,” she says. “And anytime you run out of money — anytime the world is crashing and you’re like, ‘Oh shit, I gotta sell something! — your money is there on your neck.”
It’s a testament to the durational nature of what Adesuwa’s trying to achieve. More than a project that looks to capitalise on speculative interest in Africa’s cultural capital, Legacy is firmly fixed on, well, leaving behind a self-sustaining legacy that generations to come can profit from. Beyond the objects it sells, the Legacy platform will also allow users to directly connect with the featured artisans, thereby exponentially expanding their reach, and on another discovery-focussed section of the site, launches by members of Legacy’s extended community will also be spotlit.
“This is the first thing I’ve ever done where I’ve consciously been like, ‘This is what I want to do with my life. It’s what I want to create’,” she says. “It’s not motivated by money. It’s about knowing that when I die, I can say that I brought together like minds and we were able to make this change together. That’s not just my legacy — it’s our legacy.”
