HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — To understand the pride, you feel when walking through Accent Styles Boutique—with owner Anji Degante you have to understand her humble beginnings.
"I literally started with earrings," she said, "Then it grew into pen and pad where I was literally etching out things that I would enjoy wearing and I never knew that my designs would leave the page and come to life."
Over the last four years, she's gone from earrings and a tiny storefront to an upgraded space full of East African fashion.
Degante says her love for all things East Africa—and more specifically Kenya—started with a vacation she took years ago.
"I was supposed to be there for a two-week vacation and decided to stay and extend for three years," she said, "While I was there, I fell in love with the fabrics and the cloth and the language and decided I wanted to build a bridge, I wanted to give people a piece of home."
And it's a bridge that works both ways.
Degante tells ABC Action News her boutique allows her to educate the community about the beauty of East African culture.
But it also allows her to employ East Africans who help make the designs and it helps to fund an orphanage there.
"That [money] provides their hygiene, it provides their educational needs, it provides their daily needs like food," she said.
Its work, she says, is fueled by passion and words of wisdom from her father.
"My father has always told me, 'you have to leave a place more beautiful than [when] you arrived,'" said Degante.
