This Closet is Dedicated to the Statement Piece

“It was 2011, and I was turning 21,” designer Anifa Mvuemba sets the scene. “My friends and I threw a birthday bash and I didn't have any money but I had scraps of fabric.” Mvuemba fashioned those scraps into a dress, which she then posted to her (at the time) recently created instagram account. And it took. Friends and family began to reach out, requesting she craft them something similar. “I guess, word started to get out locally,” she muses. Soon, friends became strangers in her town, who then became strangers in different locales. “And that's how it started.” The “it” in question is the design affinity that evolved into her celeb-and industry-beloved fashion brand Hanifa.

Mvuemba didn’t attend a fancy fashion school. She didn’t train under Jean Paul Gaultier or Oscar de La Renta. Instead, she gleaned technical knowledge from a seamstress aunt who was making clothes for real people in lieu of a runway. A busy woman, the aunt in question didn’t have time to babysit Mvuemba’s fledgling fashion affinity. So the burgeoning creative watched. She watched as her aunt spread bolts of fabric on the floor and marked them up. She watched as she cut and sewed sections together. After spending hours on her living room floor deducing these foreign methods (the gaps she filled in with YouTube videos), she went home and made each garment seemingly hundreds of times herself until it was perfect.

Though impressive, attention to detail isn’t the preeminent characteristic of a Hanifa collection; it’s the collective range of vibrant hues. Think deep indigos, cherry reds, and dandelion yellow, among many others. We were pleased to find a similar sentiment applied to her own closet (where Hanifa features heavily). It’s a fashion lover’s candy store in there among the neon chiffon, bedazzled silk, and iridescent satin. “One of my favorite colors to wear is a fuchsia. When I'm wearing this color, I just know I'm standing out somewhere,” she smiles. “It just makes me feel good.”

Speaking of color, a number of Bottega-green shoe boxes perch perilously on her closet racks. “I had a season where I was just obsessed with Bottega [Veneta], like obsessed.” She respects the creative direction, noting the quality has always been impeccable but the wizardry with color and accessories in recent years is something of envy. “I bought my first pair of shoes for my first big article with the New York Times and that's when [the obsession] started.” She also admires Belgian designer Dries Van Noten for his chromatic dexterity. Her first purchase of his was an almost iridescent green coat that seamlessly slots into her rainbow closet. But she might not have discovered him had it not been for another of Mvuemba’s muses, the sartorially obsessed Amanda Murray. “She exudes this confidence where it doesn't matter what she wears, it just makes sense because this is who she is," Mvuemba explains of her style icon. "The clothes don't wear her, she wears the clothes. She commands the clothes.”

When Mvuemba won the InStyle Future of Fashion Award in 2021, she donned a violet strapless evening gown of her own design, trimmed in corresponding ostrich feathers. For footwear, she selected Christian Louboutins—that’s who presented her with the award. “Whether it's basic or something for a special occasion, I always want [the case] to be: you walk in a room and everyone notices,” she states with confidence. “Always my goal every time.” That attitude always applies to all of her designs, and, in most cases, the ensembles she wears. Mvuemba is admittedly a mood-based dresser. Sometimes, the color maven is dressed in neutral staples from Uniqlo, her favorite destination for basics. “If I'm having a weird month, I'm probably wearing a lot of black because that's just how I feel at the time,” she says, though sometimes she’ll toss a sparkly Mach & Mach heel on with her sweatpants. But all she needs is a shift in mood (or weather) and she’s back to experimenting, crafting special pieces to test on her own body.

One such experiment is a patent leather indigo trench coat, piped in white with oversized buttons down the front. Said outerwear opened her Fall ’21 show in Washington D.C. When Harlem Fashion Row presented Mvuemba with the opportunity to partner with Barbie and distill her designs to a miniature version of herself, this was the garment she selected. The coat exemplifies her affinity for construction, statement, and vibrancy, in the sense of both her personal style and design sensibility. The human-sized coat hangs proudly in her closet, the bite-size version cloaks the dolls perched on her coffee table. “Little me would be screaming,” Mvuemba laughs. “I mean, I am still screaming, but she would be so proud to see what we've been able to achieve over the years.” Shop her closet essentials here.