“African Women are underrepresented in the fashion industry, I want to change that”. Farai Simoyi, a Zimbabwean native born in London, is a fashion designer with a degree in design and merchandizing from the West Virginia University.
farai 5

Her love for fashion dates back to a brief childhood in Zimbabwe, where an aunt who graduated from the London Fashion College and ran a Lingerie company would pass down fabric scraps with which Simoyi would design and tack together doll outfit and matching skirts for herself.
This early exposure to fashion began a journey to conquer and represent herself in the fashion industry. Following her degree, she enrolled at the Nuova Accademia Di Belle Arti in Milan, Italy after which she took a bold step and moved to New York.
farai 3
Fast track a few years later and she’s up-scaled from a retail sales associate with a design company, to running her own brand and sitting as a senior designer of a fashion team dedicated to one of the most talented and commercially successful rappers of our time, Nicki Minaj.  Her résumé boasts of work with household names in fashion – Beyoncé’s House of Deron, Rocawear, Luxirie by LRG, Rachel Roy, Robert Rodriguez, Anne Klein and Nine West.
Farai Simoyi prides herself on picking up valuable business lessons from the industry which contribute to her success, “Trusting yourself, setting goals, strategizing and planning” a few excerpted tips from her Forbes interview.
As an African woman, she has managed to avoid being written off as just another “African Designer” but is crafting a brand she’s labeling as “Bohemian Luxury” hoping to inspire women that are free willed and conscious of the world yet with a strong sense of self.
farai 4
 Words by Cynthia Nwaru