We are NBO: Makers of luxe, affordable jewelry

All images by Maganga Mwagogo

We Are NBO is a lush handmade jewelry brand based in Nairobi. It was founded by Michael Nguthu in 2019. Having taken a hiatus during COVID, as so many of us had to, the brand is still relatively new. Nguthu hopes that his warm, gold plated pieces tell a story of joy, resilience, community, and ingenuity.

Coming from Nairobi, Nguthu has a deep appreciation for Kenyan culture and heritage. He has also worked with international brands such as Soko, Edun, and Ulla Johnson. He melds his international experience with this appreciation to create jewelry that is contemporary with a traditional base.

Nguthu also expressed his profound admiration for women, and wishes to produce pieces that are as comfortable and easy to wear as they are beautiful. He said that he often found a hardness in the design elements of many luxury jewelry brands. Instead, he prefers to bring a more feminine character out in his designs, showcasing softer lines, less angularity and more playfulness. While We Are NBO’s collections are cohesive, they are not created from a singular idea that has been formulated beforehand. Nguthu prefers to create spontaneously, connecting with femininity in a way that is textural, soft and organic feeling.

Nguthu is deeply committed to creating an Africa-focused brand, especially in terms of the brand’s design and development. He said that in the jewelry design industry, there are companies who want to “help Africa”, particularly poorer communities, through concepts such as “trade not aid”. But, in doing so these makers often don’t actually involve any Africans in the design process or the running of the business, especially not the poorer communities that they are endeavoring to lift up. They focus on employing people from those communities as makers, and have even been seen to market their products with taglines like, “made by women in poverty”.

Nguthu wanted to turn away from this model completely. He told me that he was dismayed by the dehumanization of people in this context, which simply dismissed their lived lives and experiences. Nguthu discussed that the tag of “poverty” is also problematic; the people making the jewelry are actually artisans with their own businesses and employees; with homes and families, who they provide for. They might be saving up, or using their income to send their children to better schools. Whereas the word “poverty” brings images of people in rags living on the streets.

We Are NBO’s pieces are made in small batch production by artisans based mainly in Kibera, which was an intentional decision on the part of the studio, and Nguthu is passionate about the product designs being developed with their input. The artisans are used by multiple design studios and therefore learn skills and improve with every project they take on. Nguthu himself has found working with the artisans to be a process of skills exchange. He has been able to pass on techniques and finishes from India which he learned working with Ulla Jonson, for example, to artisans here in Nairobi. And he gains much every time he works with the artisans, through their feedback into the designs. There is dialogue between the designer and the artisans throughout, making it a truly collaborative process.

While sustainability has become a buzz word in fashion and other consumer industries, We are NBO lives up to it. The base metal of the pieces is brass, and cast brass is recycled. The other materials that We are NBO work with – wood, bone and horn – are sourced from within the artisans’ own ecosystem. There is a symbiotic relationship between the artisans who work with the various materials. The We are NBO artisans are able to work with the offcuts (of, for example, bone, wood or horn) from another artisan’s workshop.

It’s worth noting that the artisan workshops that We are NBO works with are already slightly mixed in terms of gender, but Nguthu hopes to work toward more gender equality in his projects as well.

We are NBO deliberately keeps their pricepoint sustainable. Nguthu feels that his products should be accessible to various demographics across Nairobi. They are unique pieces designed in Kenya for Kenyans. This is as opposed to some brands that might be designed here, or abroad, for production in Kenya but are intended for an export market.

Nguthu founded the brand with an intention to be cross-platform for creatives, so in the future there should be some exciting collaborations coming up, based on transcendental ideas shared between the design studio and a range of creatives who are not specifically jewelry designers.. We are NBO is also planning on expanding into a specifically men’s line of jewlery – although there are currently pieces that are not gender specific.

If you are seeking pieces that are as meaningful as they are beautiful, We are NBO is a name to remember—a brand that shines as brightly as the city it represents.