No Stone Unturned

When Danielle Sherman became the creative director of Edun, a fashion company known for promoting trade in Africa through manufacturing, one of her first missions was to incorporate jewelry into the brand’s repertoire. Last June, she trekked to the rural Ngong Hills in Kenya and to a tiny bayside outpost on the coast of Tanzania to seek out precious stones buried in the bush. At Irish expat Penny Winter’s Nairobi workshop, Sherman, who has worked for Alexander Wang and The Row, designed a goat-horn-and-quartz-crystal neck cuff on the spot. A simpler but no less arresting pendant necklace came from her time in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with George Assaf and Iver Rosenkrantz of Uru, a label known for its chains of complex knots inspired by local fishermen. Working with Uru’s factory, Sherman dreamed up three necklaces with locally sourced stones—like black and white opals—as centerpieces. She also commissioned Aman, a craftsman based in Kibera, Kenya, one of the largest slums in the world, to hand-carve bone buttons for Edun’s fall 2014 looks. “Because of our work with him, he’ll be able to send his daughter to school,” Sherman says. “My goal is to build reciprocal relationships, where artisans create something beautiful for the brand and we help improve their lives.”