Source: Vogue – 28 January 2022
Blame William Shakespeare. Early in lockdown, it became an adage – then a joke, then a cliché –that since he wrote King Lear during the plague, we could, too, channel our isolation into creative energy. But some people did actually create some life-changing feats of creativity during lockdown, including 22-year-old Tega Akinola. In early 2020, the British designer, then a sports psychology student, headed to her parents’ home in the Midlands to quarantine. Cleaning out her bedroom, she came across a bag of broken cables. Before she threw it out, the USB caught her eye. “It reminded me of the buckle on a heel,” she says. “I bought a heel and literally glued the cables on and it took off from there.”
Akinola posted the final result – a white heel with an ankle USB strap – on her Instagram in April. It was her third upcycled project she had shown to her followers, who were used to Akinola’s sporty ’fit pics. The first was a pointy-toe shoe covered with scraps of Nike socks; the second was a mini bag, inspired by fellow inventive recycler Nicole McLaughlin, crafted from an orange Patagonia fleece with the brand’s logo front and centre. Her followers loved them. “I had seen the trend of people using Nike socks to make different things, but it was normally clothing or different things,” Akinola says. “But I had never seen footwear or a heel. At first I was just cutting and gluing the thing on. It was very conceptual rather than functional.”
Since then, Akinola has turned her quarantine hobby into a business. Like her personal style, the streetwear feels a little sporty, techy, and distinctly Gen-Z. It didn’t take long for her to start getting inquiries about how to buy them. (For those wondering, she recently sold a limited edition run of accessories through the APOC store, and plans to start taking custom orders in 2022).