Beadwork is a well-documented aspect of the socio-political culture of isiZulu speaking groupings in Southern Africa. Whilst scholarship on beadwork deals largely with the denotative and connotative value it offers wearers, this article's contribution relates both to its commodification and apolitical value by confronting a general assumption that a beadwork style known as isimodeni (modern beadwork), produced as a trinket for tourists along Durban's racially stratified Golden Mile since the 1960s, is an authentic representation of a Zulu material culture. The paper probes how traditional beadwork and rickshaw rides (with both highly decorated carts and pullers) were earmarked by tourism officials of the time, as commodities that could serve a demand for colourful exoticism and accessible "Zulu" culture. Methodologically, the article draws on the visual analysis of beaded artifacts and photographs, in addition to ethnographic data derived from unstructured interviews with bead-workers on Durban beachfront, to examine how a beadwork tradition transformed into a "Zulu" tourism commodity, and then transmuted into a nationalized, form of ethnic identity and sartorial tradition.