Hanifa is now in its fourth season, and after a viral digital presentation during the pandemic and a much talked about runway presentation just under a year ago in Washington D.C., Anifa Mvuemba is looking to hone her skills and expand her label at her own pace. “I’m still discovering myself as a designer, so I’ve just been trying different things and expanding with manipulations and techniques,” she said of her tightly edited fall collection.
This season finds Mvuemba in an explorative mood, which explains why the delivery is particularly knitwear focused–knitwear has become a popular vehicle for smaller brands interested in playing with novelty. New in the category are brushed mohair bodycon dresses (which offered a compelling, if perhaps niche, interpretation of a popular knitwear trend at the moment), a one-sleeved cardigan dress in the same fabric, and a techy sheer black knit with teal accents. Most interesting was a tight-rib knit that she pleated into bodycon dresses and skirts. Wide-legged nylon trousers which she described as “basically sweatpants,” a trench and matching trousers cut in faux leather, and a corset—it seems as if corsets have become as commonplace in young women’s wardrobes as simple turtlenecks—played support roles to the knitwear in the assortment.
Mvuemba releases her collections under a see-now-buy-now structure, so she gets to see what customers are looking at and offer alternatives. This is highly beneficial, but it means she must tread lightly in order to find a balance between being on-message and offering a distinct point of view. “I dislike the pressures of the industry to have this elaborate explanation of why you’re creating what you’re creating,” she explained, saying that for fall she was thinking of her clients. “We’re constantly getting emails and DMs about the next one, and maybe right now we can’t give them another 30-piece collection, but we can give them 10 or 12 looks and go at our own pace,” she said. “I don’t want to overwork my team, I’m just being realistic, this made sense for the time and where we currently are as a business.”
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