Runway Fashion: Meet our Designer Bintiah
Are you ready for the fall runway? We hope so as we introduce Tunics and our Fashion Designer, Bintiah!
She is from Kenya and lives in Kitale, a Town in Trans-Nzoia county. She was raised by a single mother and has seven siblings. Her mother died when she was 15 and she never knew her father. Most kids in Kenya are raised without fathers.
Bintiah learned how to plait hair and earned some money but she was not able to attend school because no one in her family could pay the school fees. She joined a basketball league and tried modeling because she is tall and people thought she would be good at modeling. She did many pageants and cat walks and fell in love with fashion.
During that time the church she attended had an orphanage and the youth group would feed and help the street kids. This is where she first felt a calling to help kids on the street. She and her family would cook food for the street kids on Christmas Day. Before COVID and during she has done it every year since 2008 and feeds everyone once a month.
When Eldonna and others came to Kenya from the US, they took on the sponsorship of a few kids each and Bintiah has been the trusted “boots on the ground” person to work with the kids and make sure their fee’s are paid, they get back and forth to school and their other needs are met.
Bintiah was in pageants then started organizing pageants. Companies started paying her to organize the pageants. She puts on a pageant at the Kitale Women’s prison every March for International Women’s Day to inspire the women to empower themselves and work towards having a better life for them and their children. Children are permitted to stay in prison with their Mom until they are 4 years old.
Thanks to a sponsor from the US, Bintiah was able to attend design school and learn more about how to design fashion. She went to fashion design school for 2 year and is living her dream of designing fashion and hopes to be a big name brand on day with her fashions in big name retailers. Basket and Beads Kenya is honored to have such a talented designer working with us and also thankful for her heart for the street kids and the work she does with them.
Baskets and Beads was even featured in the Vanguard University Live2Free Annual Fair Trade Fashion Show.
This versatile tunic is a great fashion find and made by Bintiah.