Zainab: Top Fashion by Appointment Only
If retail is supposed to be like theater, or cinema, if you will, then Zainab Sumu aims to give her clients an exclusive personal screening.
Her Hollywood, Calif.–based boutique, Zainab, is by appointment only. Her clients hail from the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles and wealthy suburban areas such as Calabasas, Calif., and even San Francisco. They demand privacy and hate the hassle of big crowds. Sumu was introduced to her clientele in 2005 when she was a manager/buyer for exclusive boutique H.Lorenzo, and wealthy women made requests to shop the boutique after hours or at some time when they could have the store to themselves.
She opened her own boutique in May 2007 after her contract with H.Lorenzo ended. Her boutique’s mission was to offer privacy and show the most fashion-forward, elegant clothes from labels such as Azze-dine Alaia, Junya Watanabe Commes Des Garccedil;ons and Proenza Schouler.
One of the top-selling items recently has been pleather pants by Watanabe. Retail priced at $485, the pants are cut like a body-hugging, straight-legged denim jean. Since Sumu’s clients travel often to places with cold weather, they are also purchasing a heavy peacoat-style jacket from Azzedine Alaia, priced at $4,000.
Sumu shops for her collections at fashion weeks in New York, Paris, Milan and London. For homewares, the Sierra Leone native shops for crafts in South Africa, Madagascar and Senegal.
She said that running a by-appointment boutique means having to suffer less stress than her past gigs managing stores and in corporate sales for fashion labels. However, it also means that she must create an ambiance that would make her clients want to leave their offices and homes. For this, she relies on her boutique’s environment of African arts, lounge-like electronic music, look books from the top fashion labels and perhaps a glass of champagne.—Andrew Asch
