What Hanifa Wants the
Fashion Industry to Learn
On a recent warmer-than-usual fall day, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., was decked out with pink lighting, chairs engraved with “Hanifa” on the back, a pale-pink carpet as a runway, and a live orchestra that was performing songs like Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later.” Anifa Mvuemba, the 31-year old founder behind Hanifa, was having her first fashion show. Mvuemba never had plans to have a runway show. In fact, she’s built her brand by not adhering to the fashion industry’s standards. But earlier this year, when she was thinking about how she would celebrate a decade of her brand, she started planning one.
The big day had finally arrived. Hundreds of industry professionals, fellow designers, and fans of the brand —including some of the Housewives of Potomac — gathered to watch her designs make their way down the runway. Black models wearing a variety of hairstyles — sleek bobs, natural curls, and finger waves — and ranging in sizes wore signature colorful knits, excessively cuffed pants, and a royal-blue patent leather coat.
Mvuemba has gotten a lot of buzz for her designs, which embrace and are specifically designed for plus-size bodies and curves. In fact, they are the reason she has built her brand selling direct to consumers over Instagram and on her site. She relies solely on the community of women who follow her and buy her designs. “Even when we didn’t have a lot of support from the industry, our customers and community know we see them, and that makes a huge difference,” she said.
Her latest fashion show reflected these women. Plus-size models, who are usually sent down the runway in safe looks like long black dresses at other shows, instead wore sultry sheer jumpsuits, body-hugging dresses, and bold prints. The crowd cheered and gave Mvuemba a standing ovation.
The brand’s ethos might have started a decade ago, but the casting started just a week before the show. Mvuemba wanted to cast local models instead of flying in big names from places like New York and Paris. “There’s so much talent in D.C.,” Mvuemba said. She collaborated with casting director
Kat Mateo, who’s known for challenging the industry’s conventional standards and has cast for brands like
Pyer Moss. Mvuemba says Mateo “just gets it.” Together, they sought to book women who looked like her consumers. “Women’s bodies are a big narrative for the brand, and it’s important to show that,” she said. The woman she is speaking to, she said, “can be a size 2, but she’s also a size 12 and 16.”
Over 130 women lined up with their headshots to try their shot at being cast. “Whether I get it or not, I’ll be rooting for you and watching the show,” said one model.
In the hotel lobby of the casting, Mateo explained that she believes that lack of community is what holds a lot of designers back in the industry who don’t care to be as inclusive. “If our consumers are everyday people, why would we have them looking at a standard that’s not real?” Mateo asked. “The runway reflects the times, and the times of just a blonde girl walking are over. We should be representing what we see on the street every day.”
Being inclusive to size goes beyond the runway for Mvuemba. Each of her collections goes up to at least a 2XL. She knows that changing the industry’s size standards is not easy, especially as a young Black designer with fewer resources than larger houses, but for her, that is not an excuse. “Maybe it’s uncomfortable for people, but I also feel like they just don’t want to,” she said. Instead, she said, “they get a plus-size fit model to do plus-size pieces and a smaller fit model for other sizes.”
In the casting world, Mateo said that the excuses aren’t far behind, but she believes that labels like Hanifa are paving the way for everyone else. She also believes that not seeing diversity on the runway, whether it’s bodies, hair, or race, has a lot to do with people being stuck in their ways. (Read More on
The Cut)
Menswear and a more fluid future
You’ve probably noticed how every international red carpet today has at least a few men turning up in gender fluid silhouettes — from Harry Styles’ sheer tops and pussy bows to Timothée Chalamet’s sequinned hoodies. To say that a shift is underway is an understatement.
Closer home, Indian men’s long-standing love affair with polos, linens and denim is now, increasingly, accommodating other silhouettes. From Gucci’s gender-fluid tailoring to Mard, Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla’s dramatic ensembles, non-binary style is having a moment. And this is changing the country’s $26 billion menswear market (Italian Trade Agency). For instance, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited has joined forces with couturier Tarun Tahiliani — renowned for his feminine silhouettes and intricate embroidery — to create a new subsidiary to focus on affordable menswear.
Womenswear designers such as Payal Singhal, Anamika Khanna, and Monisha Jaising are foraying into menswear, and men don’t seem to mind; the labels are thriving. “It’s not about straight or gay [or anything in between the spectrum] any more. Even classic dressers have warmed up to vibrant prints, sheer fabrics and sparkle texturing, and experimental silhouettes,” says Singhal, recalling a recent request from a six-foot-tall man from Pune who wanted to wear her sheer organza kurta to his son’s wedding. “I used to hear ‘I want something different’ from women, but now I hear that from men.”
What masculinity stood for a decade ago is a far cry from its definition today. Popular digital creator Siddharth Batra is often known to borrow pieces from his girlfriend and fashion influencer Komal Pandey’s closet to playfully recontextualise them on social media. “If I had my way, I would have one closet for both me and my partner; just shelves for tops, bottoms, etc. Tags for gender-specifications in fashion have never mattered to me. I’d say, just wear the same clothes, pyaar badega.”
He credits the queer community for some of the stylistic experimentations. “I do notice a positive trajectory [towards fluidity] across the gender spectrum. Brands have also, finally, started moving towards inclusive approaches, with the consumers following suit,” adds Batra, who is often seen sporting experimental make-up, ruffles, edgy nail paints, and diaphanous separates. (Read More on
The Hindu)
Why Fast Fashion Has to Slow Down - MIT Sloan Management Review
Much of the fashion industry trades on speedy design-to-sale and a culture of disposability. Although this business model is seductive and profitable, it isn’t sustainable.
Spanish apparel maker Zara is famed in the fashion world for starting a clothes production revolution. When most retailers were taking nine months to get a clothing item from the drafting table to the store,
Zara was figuring out how to slash that time to a mere 15 days. The company made clothes so quickly that in 2005, Madonna fans showed up to a concert in knock-offs of the clothes the performer had worn just a few weeks earlier.
Fast fashion was born.
Speed was a big part of the revolution, but so too was low cost and expendability. As quickly as fashionistas acquired new looks — fed in part by Zara’s production of a new collection every week, or
20,000 new designs each year — they were also tossing out the old. Why launder clothes when they’re so cheap to replace? On average, fast fashion customers discarded inexpensive dresses, shirts, and pants after wearing them as few as seven times. A limited shelf life was part of the allure.
But a growing number of shoppers are having a change of heart. They are raising questions about the sustainability of the fast fashion model as awareness of the negative impact of a disposable culture grows. And they have begun acting on their environmental values as well as their personal styles.
Boosted by digital technologies, these options include sophisticated online outlets for reselling, renting, and repairing clothes. These business models reflect a fundamental rethinking of how we purchase clothing — celebrating upcycled clothes and creating a countertrend to fast fashion in the process.
Zara’s decades-long approach to fashion, made possible by integrating vertically and turbocharging logistics, has permeated the clothing industry. Other clothing manufacturers have emulated its model and seen similar success, including Sweden-based H&M, U.K.-based Boohoo, and Italy-based Benetton. The Chinese fast fashion company Shein (meaning “she inside”) is so popular that its app surpassed Amazon’s as the
most downloaded shopping app in the U.S. in 2021. Shein uses digital technologies to control its production chain, continuously mining user data to see what customers are watching and liking, and offering iterations for sale.