HER HOUSE

Aisling Camps, Stella Novarino, Anifa Mvuemba and Bianca Saunders share the vision, discipline and faith it takes to build a lasting fashion legacy

- By Andrea Bossi

Stella Novarino

Establishing a fashion house is no easy task, but leading fashion designers Aisling Camps, Stella Novarino, Anifa Mvuemba and Bianca Saunders have managed to build namesake brands that command global attention. As Black women at the helm of their own houses, they channel beauty and confidence into labels that resonate far beyond fashion. Despite operating in an industry notorious for being tough on independent designers, these couturiers have cultivated teams, expanded their influence across continents and sustained audiences who rally around every release.

Their paths to the spaces they currently occupy have been anything but conventional: an engineer turned knitwear visionary; a Haitian-Italian creative who carries activism into Milan; a designer whose second act is even stronger than her first; and a London-based talent reshaping menswear through fluidity. Each brings heritage and imagination to her brand, grounding fashion in both the personal and the global.

Beginning with independent labels, these designers have created multimillion-dollar businesses—providing employment, fueling creative economies, and proving that Authorship and scale can coexist. Their designs now travel across borders; they are worn on red carpets, stocked in retailers worldwide and embraced by ever-growing communities. Every milestone reached has been on their own terms: sometimes slowly, sometimes with risk, but always deliberately—proof that independence can be as powerful as acquisition.

These are the women whose dresses draw the spotlight, whose knitwear is as intricate as ornate architecture, whose tailoring moves smoothly between genders, and whose runways spark conversations and make headlines. In their own ways, each of them has proven that a brand is more than a business: It’s language, a legacy, a life’s work. To engage with their vision is to understand where fashion is going next.

AISLING CAMPS