Designer Spotlight

Ruth Smith was born in Trinidad and spent her childhood between Trinidad and Tobago, before moving to Canada at age 12. She was raised in Toronto. Her path to Ghana began in 2010, when she was recruited by Rita Marley to work with the Bob and Rita Marley Foundation in Aburi, Ghana.

The decade that followed took her across the continent, through Benin, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Ethiopia, and, from 2021 to 2024, three years living in Malawi. These experiences sparked Kinky Nomad's design language, shaped by the accumulated color, mood, and rhythm of the continent.

That experience became Savanna's Adinkra symbols, Kemet's gold-on-black imagery, and the All Roads Lead to Ghana series.

For a Trinidad-and-Tobago-born, Toronto-raised woman who built a life across West and East Africa, Kinky Nomad represents identity not as a fixed point, but as a journey. Every piece is a mantra: wearable proof that home can be built, chosen, and carried. This is not fashion borrowed from a continent; it is fashion lived on one.