Busayo Olupona
With Joy Always
Busayo Olupona's name, Oluwabusayo, means "brings joy." In Yoruba tradition, your paternal grandparents name you, and the name is a reading of your ori: your destiny, the thing you came here to do. She spent most of her life fulfilling that name without ever naming it. Now she signs every email "with joy always."
The road there ran through a law firm, two hospital stays, and a fabric she once begged her mother to let her stop wearing. Roanne and Busayo know each other well. RoAndCo refreshed her brand, and Busayo joined an Of Two Minds retreat at Sea Ranch. That makes this a conversation that goes far past the founder story. They go deep: on childhood bullying, what two cardiac events taught her about stress and blame, quitting alcohol, and returning to the Yoruba faith of her fathers. Running through all of it is Busayo's belief that we go back to the things that hurt us most, and those are the things we get to transmute.
*Content note: this conversation includes discussion of childhood bullying and two cardiac events.
About Busayo Olupona
Designer and creative director of Busayo, the Brooklyn-based label she founded in 2011, built on Adire, the Yoruba indigo resist-dye tradition, and made by hand in Nigeria with local artisans. Born in the U.S. and raised in Nigeria from age three, she practiced law while building the brand, leaving her firm in 2022 to design full-time.
Links:
Busayo
Busayo's Instagram
- A red dress her father brought home when she was eight, the origin of becoming a designer
- Apprenticing with the Adire dyers in the Nigerian market
- Wearing what she made to her law firm, which led to "where did you get that?" to becoming a business
- "It chose me": the article forwarded to her ten times until she surrendered
- Bullying and reclamation: transmuting what hurt most into what feeds you
- Her name, her ori, and the responsibility of being called "brings joy"
- What the Sea Ranch retreat surfaced
- Two cardiac events, and reframing "how did I cause this?" to "what were the conditions that allowed this?"
- Quitting alcohol as the single biggest change agent of her life
- Leaving the Anglican church for Yoruba traditional religion
- Hearing messages for herself and for strangers
- Her mission in Nigeria: hiring for character over credentials
- Life as a love affair, and the prayer said over the clothes
creator & host: Roanne Adams
DIrector: Tommy AgRiodimas
Producer & EDITOR: NICK STUMPF, TEN TEN MEDIA
music: phil aceto
SPECIAL THANKS to:
RACHEL COMEY for wardrobe
johnny wahba for support