A Jewelry Design Journey From Fashionable Omo Valley Arbore Women To Mario Gerth To INIVA Miami

A Jewelry Design Journey From Fashionable Omo Valley Arbore Women To Mario Gerth To INIVA Miami

Serendipity seems to be always at play at Anne of Carversville and in my GlamTribal Jewelry. Close friends think the powers are actually stronger than serendipity in my case, but let me stick with the facts here. The DNA of my GlamTribal collection lies in East Africa, in an area extending from southern Ethiopia’s Omo Valley into the Lake Turkana region, South Sudan and northern Kenya, with a final destination in Nairobi and specifically Kibera. This is not to say that there aren’t more pieces in my puzzle, but my life has wound in and around these pillars for decades.

Hans Silvester’s monumental book ‘Natural Fashion’ (2009) introduced me to the Omo Valley people in 2012, inspiring the first major turn in my vision for GlamTribal. These precious people are living in grave danger of extinction in a modern world, In particular the Gilgel Give III damn threatens their very existence. For five years Italian photographer Fausto Podavini has charted the progress of the damn and its impact on one of Africa’s most remote frontiers. National Geographic updates the story of perhaps epic change in the Omo Valley.