About Us

Meet Vanessa Lacewell
Founder, Worldwide Origins

Every house begins with a vision. Ours began with a woman who saw what the culture deserved and refused to offer it anything less.

In 1990, Vanessa Lacewell founded V.V. Designs from a place of deep cultural conviction. Not a business plan. Not a market opportunity. A calling. She recognized that the men and women of Black Greek life, people who had pledged their lives to excellence, brotherhood, and sisterhood, deserved pieces worthy of the legacy they carried. That recognition became a company. That company became a house.

What began as a boutique Afrocentric product line grew, as all true things do, through partnership and purpose. When Lacewell joined forces with co-founder and co-owner Terry Carter, something larger than either of them emerged. Together they built Worldwide Origins into a national supplier of fraternity and sorority jewelry and accessories, guided by tradition.

For over thirty years, Lacewell has designed every collection; a visionary whose reverence for the Divine 9 experience is present in every piece the House produces. She does not design for the mass market. She designs for the member who earned their letters, for the graduate who still wears them with pride, and for the legacy that lives in

She has always believed that serving this community is not a privilege of commerce. It is a sacred responsibility.

At Worldwide Origins, we do not simply create for the culture. We are born of it, shaped by it, and devoted to honoring it in everything we make.

That has been Vanessa Lacewell's standard since 1990. It remains her standard today.

Worldwide Origins, St. Louis, Missouri. Est. 1992.

Meet David Beckford
Marketing Director, Worldwide Origins

Some people sell Greek culture. David Beckford has lived it for nearly four decades.

In the spring of 1986, Beckford crossed the burning sands as a solo initiate at the Alpha Eta chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. in St. Louis, Missouri; an event unprecedented in the state's history. What followed was a lifetime of service that would shape not only his chapter, but the broader landscape of Black Greek excellence.

As two-time chapter president from 1987 to 1989, Beckford led Alpha Eta to raise over $100,000 annually for community initiatives while capturing state, regional, and national step show championship titles. Leadership was never a title for him. It was a standard.

A graduate of Washington University and Webster University, Beckford carried that standard into entrepreneurship; founding Logo Graphics Design and Advertising in 1992 and co-founding Blackball, a pioneering Negro League sports apparel company.

His eye for design and deep reverence for Black Greek identity led him to Worldwide Origins, where for over 30 years he has co-designed collections alongside Founder Vanessa Lacewell; pieces crafted not just for style, but for legacy.

Beyond the brand, Beckford reaches millions through his multimedia platforms thenarrativematters.com, Community News Networks, and DISC USA; and through his "Not Just A Part" series, which spotlights excellence in community service across all Divine 9 undergraduate and graduate chapters nationwide.

When you wear a piece from Worldwide Origins, you wear the vision of someone who has carried the letters, led the chapter, built the business, and never stopped serving the culture.

David Beckford isn't just behind the brand. He is the brand.

Meet Ashlei Gamblin
Director of Customer Experience, Worldwide Origins

Every great house requires more than a vision. It requires the steady, unwavering commitment of those who ensure that vision is felt by every person it touches.

Ashlei Gamblin is that commitment, made human.

Armed with a Master's degree in Organizational Management and over two decades of sales and leadership experience, Gamblin brought to Worldwide Origins something that cannot be taught in any classroom or cultivated in any boardroom. A servant's heart. The rare and remarkable belief that true leadership is not measured by authority, but by the depth of care extended to every person in your charge.

Her career has been defined not by titles, but by transformation. Wherever Gamblin has led, teams have grown stronger, cultures have grown richer, and customers have felt something that the finest brands in the world spend lifetimes trying to manufacture. The feeling of being genuinely seen.

At Worldwide Origins, that gift finds its fullest expression. In a house built on the sacred bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood, where every piece carries the weight of a legacy and every customer arrives not merely to purchase but to belong, Gamblin ensures that the experience of the brand is as extraordinary as the pieces themselves. She understands instinctively what luxury has always known: that the product is only the beginning. How a customer is made to feel is the lasting impression.

She leads with integrity. She leads with compassion. And she leads with the unshakeable conviction that every customer and every team member deserves to feel valued, supported, and cared for, without exception and without compromise.

In a world that too often mistakes efficiency for excellence, Ashlei Gamblin quietly insists on both.

Worldwide Origins, St. Louis, Missouri. Est. 1992.

Meet Carina Marie
Sales Associate, Worldwide Origins

The most powerful things are often the smallest. A cufflink. A pendant. A tie, chosen with intention. In the hands of someone who truly understands them, these are not accessories. They are declarations.

Carina Marie has spent seventeen years learning the language of personal presentation at the highest level. Her education was not earned in lecture halls but in the world's most discerning retail environments, among the counters and collections of Tom Ford, Dior, Lancôme, Estée Lauder, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Dyson, and T3. Brands that do not tolerate mediocrity. Brands that understand, as Carina always has, that the details are never decorative. They are defining.

An English major by training, she arrived at luxury retail with something her peers could not acquire through experience alone: the instinct for narrative. She understands that style is not simply seen. It is communicated. Every piece a person wears tells a story before a single word is spoken. A great tie arrives in the room first. Cufflinks signal the kind of man who notices things. A necklace, chosen with care, can carry culture, confidence, and legacy all at once.

At Worldwide Origins, that understanding finds its most meaningful expression. In a house where every piece is consecrated by the traditions of the Divine 9, where jewelry is not ornament but identity, Carina brings something rare to the floor. She does not simply sell. She listens. She considers. She curates the precise piece for the precise person, understanding instinctively that the right accessory does not complete an outfit. It completes a statement.

Her clients trust her eye. They trust her knowledge of craftsmanship. And they trust her ability to see not just who they are, but who they intend to be when they walk into the room that matters most.

For Carina Marie, accessories are never finishing touches. They are the introduction to a story only you can tell. She is here to make certain yours is unforgettable.

Worldwide Origins, St. Louis, Missouri. Est. 1992.

Meet Darryl Tillard
Sales and Events Director, Worldwide Origins

Some people discover their calling. Others are born into it.

Darryl Tillard's education in the art of human connection did not begin in a classroom, or a boardroom, but at the knee of his mother, Barbara Tillard. A former social worker for the state of Missouri who later sold Encyclopedia Britannica and Hoover vacuum cleaners door to door, Barbara understood something that most people spend entire careers trying to learn: that selling is not a transaction. It is a relationship; trust, extended one conversation at a time.

Her son was paying attention.

By the age of nine, Tillard had already begun his own apprenticeship in the craft. What followed was a life lived at the intersection of ambition, charm, and an extraordinary instinct for people. When TWA opened its doors to male flight attendants for the first time, Tillard walked through them, trading the familiar for the exceptional, as he would do again and again throughout a career defined by range, reinvention, and an absolute refusal to be ordinary.

If it can be sold, he has sold it. That is not a boast. It is a biography.

For nearly a decade, Tillard has brought that lifetime of mastery to Worldwide Origins, leading sales and events with the ease of a man who has never needed a script because he has always understood the deeper truth of his work. People do not buy products. They buy belief. They buy the feeling that the person across from them sees them, values them, and would never offer them anything less than the finest.

That understanding has drawn remarkable people into his orbit. Among the most distinguished is Civil Rights Attorney Benjamin Crump, a proud member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, whose relationship with Worldwide Origins was cultivated through Tillard's singular gift for connection. That a man of Crump's stature and legacy stands among the House's most prominent supporters is a testament not only to the brand, but to the man who built that bridge.

It is worth noting, as a detail that history seems to have arranged deliberately, that Barbara Tillard knew Vanessa Lacewell long before her son ever did. The two women modeled together in fashion shows, their paths crossing in the way that meaningful things so often do, years before the thread would pull their families into the same house.

Some legacies are inherited. Some are earned. Darryl Tillard has spent a lifetime honoring both.

Worldwide Origins, St. Louis, Missouri. Est. 1992.

Meet Catina R. Shannon
Retail Specialist, Worldwide Origins

Power, when it is genuine, is quiet; it transforms every room it enters.
Catina R. Shannon has spent a lifetime transforming rooms.
A native of St. Louis, Missouri and a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.,
Shannon brings to Worldwide Origins something that cannot be manufactured or
taught. The instinct of a woman who understands, at the deepest level, what it means to
wear your identity with intention. As a soror, she does more than sell pieces that carry
the symbols of Black Greek life. She knows their weight. She has worn that weight
herself.
Her expertise spans the full arc of the luxury retail experience. In event management
and sales, she orchestrates moments that linger long after the evening ends, connecting
the right people to the right pieces, in the precise atmosphere that allows both to shine.
Behind the lens, her photography and videography capture not merely what a piece
looks like, but what it means, the pride in a member's eyes, the quiet elegance of a
well-chosen accessory, the story that lives in every clasp and cufflink.
It is this rare combination, the strategic mind, the artist's eye, and the insider's
understanding of Black Greek culture, that makes Shannon an essential presence at
Worldwide Origins. She does not approach the floor as a salesperson approaches a
transaction. She addresses it as a curator addresses a collection. With discernment.
With reverence. With the absolute certainty that the right piece, in the right hands, is
much more than an accessory.
It is an heirloom.
At Worldwide Origins, every member of our team carries the culture they serve.
Catina R. Shannon wears it, lives it, and ensures that every client who walks through
our doors feels the full power of what that means.

Worldwide Origins, St. Louis, Missouri. Est. 1992.