Money Date With Zashadu
/Every Friday I recommend having a money date…with a mimosa. Hence the name of my blog, Money & Mimosas.
Your money date is your special time to review your finances, celebrate your wins, and reflect on how you used your money to make a difference. Feel free to do it alone or with your money buddy. If you’d like a step-by-step guide for your money date, click here to download your free checklist.
In these money date articles, Money & Mimosas features small to medium-sized businesses that are aligned with our values. This fall, we are focusing solely on eco-friendly beauty and home brands to help you make more conscious choices to help the environment.
This week we are featuring Zashadu, a company based in Lagos, Nigeria that handcrafts luxury bags with sustainable and ethical practices.
Zainab Ashadu is the Creative Director and Designer who founded the company in 2010. She had always loved handbags from a young age and after pursuing many different interests like acting, art curatorship, and architecture, she decided to give fashion a try. Once she completed a course at the London College of Fashion in Leather Accessories Design, she moved back to Lagos and began Zashadu.
Since then, Zashadu has specialised in crafting uniquely designed luxury bags, shoes, and home products with sustainable practices and materials. Unlike other luxury fashion brands, many of whom still use non-sustainable methods to produce their products, the price you pay for these items is truly worthwhile thanks to their revolutionary creation process.
As stated on their website, “All our pieces are created at our workshop in Lagos, Nigeria, by a team that upholds and revives traditional techniques that have been passed down through the centuries. We believe in high quality, beautifully and painstakingly crafted pieces created in a way that ensures the advancement and growth of our artisans, community and materials.” Seeing this commitment to traditional craftsmanship is impeccable, but Zashadu doesn’t stop there. They also only release one of a kind collections in limited numbers, preventing mass production of items and material waste.
Additionally, they source materials locally, which actively lowers their carbon footprint. This mostly includes leathers, which are from locally raised sheep and goats. Most importantly though, these leathers are, “sourced as a by product of the locally produced and farmed meat industry.” Many other luxury fashion brands source leather with only the production of products in mind, not thinking about the other things an animal can provide people in a community (milk, meat, wool, ect.). With the way Zashadu sources theirs, you know that the animal was of value to the people who cared for it and not disposed of solely for product creation.
For products that are not created with leather and use exotic skins (like Crocodile), Zashadu also sources them in a similar way. They too are a by-product of the local communities who consume the meat, which is indeginous to the region. Working together with community partners, they are able to gather these rare skins up to three times a year.
However, that is not all they do to be sustainable. They also work closely with local tanneries that produce leathers for companies internationally to upcycle out of season colors and patterns to make them into something new. This is extremely innovative to reduce even more textile waste in the market overall, which is a growing problem in the fast fashion industry.
Overall, Zashadu is the perfect place to find luxurious sustainable and ethically made bags, shoes, and home items. From the local sourcing of leathers, limited releases, and upcycling techniques, they have put sustainability at the forefront of their brand unlike any other in the fashion industry.
For these reasons, we have rated them 5/5 (or a full mimosa glass) for their commitment to using traditional crafting to create sustainable and ethical products. Next time you’re looking for a new luxury bag to add to your collection, we invite you to give them a try. Cheers to Zashadu!
