Sherri McMullen kicked off her upcoming tour of events in Los Angeles this weekend, throwing a dinner, panel discussion and wellness day to shine a spotlight on the McMullen brand, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary.
“L.A. holds a special place for me in my heart,” said McMullen at Bari restaurant in West Hollywood, where she hosted a welcome dinner. “Growing up, I would come here to visit my family, my aunts and my cousins, and really fashionable people in my life. We also have a really amazing client base here that we’ve been working with for years, and we haven’t actually met face to face, so this felt like a natural progression.”
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Opened in Oakland, Calif., in 2007, McMullen’s retail shop features emerging and established designers, focused on providing a space for creators of color.
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“It was a true brick-and-mortar, and the people that we were celebrating were people based in the Bay Area, but what we have seen over the past 15 years is that we have an audience and a relationship with people and clients from all over the world, really,” continued McMullen, a native of Oklahoma. “And L.A. has been a big market for us.”
She’ll next head to Detroit in September for six months, then return to the Bay Area for a runway show in November. But first, festivities are in L.A., where she united the likes of Brown Girl Jane’s Tai Beauchamp, VeeMode’s Amira Vee, author Marcellas Reynolds and Studio One Eighty Nine’s Abrima Erwiah and Rosario Dawson (whose spring 2022 collection can be found in-store).
“Our brand ethos is very aligned in the sense that we feel very passionate about supporting the work of people in the diaspora, people who are actually hand-beading, hand-dyeing and doing all of the work of creating beautiful product in the continent of Africa,” McMullen said of Erwiah and Dawson, who launched their African artisan-made brand and social enterprise in 2013.
The duo was tapped to lead a conversation on “ownership and community” on Saturday at “McMullen House,” a home in L.A.’s Leimert Park — chosen to showcase the vibrant culture of the historically Black neighborhood.
“We talked about fashion being an agent of social change,” Erwiah said of the mission behind Studio One Eighty Nine.
They met McMullen through mutual friends, she explained.
“Like recognizes like and wants to support that and gets how challenging and difficult it is to do this work,” said Dawson, asked what brought the two out in support. “It’s so important to have like-minded people who get that.…We’ve been admiring each other for a while, and it’s just been really great and gratifying to recognize that we create ourselves specifically to support others that get it. It doesn’t take just a pandemic for us to recognize, ‘maybe we need to shift gears.’ Some of us have been doing that work for a long time. And it’s really powerful and beautiful to see each other and have the opportunity to collaborate and meet these moments as they show.”
Studio One Eighty Nine has upcoming “openings and several collaborations” in the works, said Erwiah, who added: “We grew a lot. Our artisans grew a lot. We’ve impacted way more communities, especially this year in particular.…When we get orders of thousands and thousands and thousands, we can spread it across more people, which is what’s happening now.”