Misha Nonoo: Interview
You may have heard of Misha Nonoo as the matchmaker who introduced Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. This is not a story about that.
Based in New York, Misha Nonoo is a fashion designer, who made the Forbes 30 under 30 list and was a finalist for the 2013 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. She was born in the Middle East (Bahrain) to an English mother and an Iraqi Jewish father, and was educated in London and Paris. Nonoo does not take that for granted. “It has given me an appreciation for different cultures and an understanding of women’s lives in different places.”
As a teenager, she got her first taste of the fashion world. It was the 1990s and London was swinging again. The Gallagher brothers still liked each other, Kate Moss celebrated her 25th with Donatella Versace, Isabella Blow turned heads in Swarovski-encrusted lobster hats and Alexander McQueen went from being the enfant terrible of London fashion to Givenchy’s chief designer.
Nonoo never studied fashion though: she did a business degree in Paris, but spent her time observing the women in the streets. “I was exposed to the essence of what classic fashion looks like—the staples in your wardrobe that you hold on to for a long time. French women have a well-edited wardrobe, a few pieces they know fit them and work well; there is effortlessness to the way they put things together. So that was an integral part of my fashion education.”
She ended up in New York—“because of the entrepreneurial spirit that I’ve never felt anywhere else in my life”—working for a small tailor in the Garment District. It was a baptism of fire: Nonoo worked on the production side and did everything from dealing with factories to collecting samples to going to Première Vision, a textile fashion trade fair, to select fabrics.
Fashion is a saturated market. There is always another influencer who wants to launch their own line of sweatshirts, but without the knowledge of small details, these brands most often turn out to be vanity projects. “You need to know what it takes to actually make a garment: from the fabric you use to the lining. Does it have to stretch? Are people able to sweat in it? How does someone move in a garment? If you are going to the effort of making something, it has to be made fully and every aspect of it needs to be taken into account.”
In New York, Nonoo was creating samples in her spare time. One Saturday, she was at lunch in East Village at Prune, wearing one of her own jackets, and someone a few tables away noticed it—she turned out to be the head buyer at Intermix and was eager to see more. By Wednesday, Nonoo walked out of the Intermix office with a purchase order for $150,000. She had eight jackets and coats, and no business plan. But in 60 days, she delivered the styles and was asked to do more. “It was not how I imagined starting my own business, but I had beginner’s luck. If I knew all the downfalls and the hardships, I may have never gotten started.”
She launched her eponymous label in 2011, ensuring that sustainability was a core value of the brand. Her approach is a pragmatic one. No fashion brand is 100 percent sustainable—for starters, the creative director exhales CO2—no matter what their publicists may say. Instead of trying to tick all of the boxes, Nonoo concentrates on sustainability aspects she is truly passionate about. “We are trying to become more and more sustainable incrementally. We started with our manufacturing, went on to packaging, then moved on to looking at fabrics. We are now looking across our entire supply chain and our processes.”
Another tweak was made when Nonoo abandoned New York’s fashion week schedule to show her Spring 2016 collection on Instagram. Having spent a day at the Instagram HQ in California, she realised she was spending her marketing budget on something everyone else was doing. “Fashion weeks have had this moment coming for so long—this idea of a fixed time on a calendar doesn’t make any sense. And what does this mean from a carbon footprint standpoint? I still believe it is important to touch and feel something, but I wanted to do something unique and carve out my own space.” She reached out to influencers around the world to showcase her collection over the space of 12 hours; every single one said yes. In return, the designer donated to Women for Women.
Nonoo ditched her wholesale accounts in 2016, moving the entire business to a direct-to-consumer model. “We manufacture everything on demand,” she explains, “meaning we hold absolutely no inventory. We have all of the fabric on hand, and once the order is placed, the piece is cut and shipped to the customer within seven to 10 business days.” The collection consists of staple pieces, with loyal customers returning to buy their favourite item in a variety of colours. During the pandemic, while many retailers filed for bankruptcy and sold with unprecedented discounts, Nonoo avoided going on sale at all. Instead, a percentage of Misha Nonoo proceeds go to frontline workers, WHO and Covid-19 related charities.
The Duchess of Sussex creeps into our conversation, very briefly. Nonoo helped design a button down for Meghan Markle’s capsule collection with Smart Works, the UK charity providing women with free coaching and clothes to get back into the workforce. For every capsule piece purchased, one was donated to Smart Works. Ten days after the launch, enough was sold to provide the charity with a year’s worth of clothing. Nonoo, understandably, is very proud of this project.
A new project is underway, too—motherhood. Somehow, you struggle to imagine Nonoo in denim overalls.“My style did not change in the slightest during the pregnancy,” she laughs, “I wore my Misha Nonoo pieces, just in sizes up, the whole way through.” But pregnancy made her realise how stale the offer is (and how many shapeless dresses one encounters). She collaborated with a New York maternity brand Hatch, designing two variations of the “Husband Shirt”—the one Megnan Markle wore on her first public outing with Prince Harry at the Invictus Games. “Sustainability was on the top of my mind, and I wanted to create something one could wear before, during and post-pregnancy. In the future, it is definitely on my radar of what we can add to the collection.”
