Emma Grede recently announced on her book tour why she didn’t invest in Diarrha N’Diaye’s company, Ami Colé. On the “She’s So Lucky” podcast with host Les Alfred, Grede shared that she doesn’t back first-time founders unless she sees something “extraordinary” about both the person and the company, explaining she didn’t see that with Ami Colé. Emma Grede hiring Diarrha N’Diaya at SKIMS Whilst Grede did not think Ami Colé was worth supporting, she evidently thought she was worth hiring. After Alicia Scott of Range Beauty introduced N’Diaye to Grede,
Anifa Mvuemba, founder of the fashion brand Hanifa, has announced that the brand will pause production. “I don’t want to rush just to prove resilience. I don’t want to pretend everything is fine just to keep momentum,” Mvuemba said in an interview with The Cut. “Right now, I’m reflecting. I’m protecting what matters to me in this season. And I’m allowing myself to be human in the process. I don’t know exactly what the future of Hanifa looks like at this very moment. And for the first time in 14
Ami Colé, a Black-owned beauty line founded by Diarrha N’Diaye-Mbaye, will shut down in September. N’Diaye-Mbaye, who is one of the few Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture capital, wrote about her decision in The Cut, explaining that maintaining the business in this current market wasn’t sustainable. “We made operational decisions that felt necessary at the time — like scaling up production to meet potential demand — without truly knowing how the market would respond,” N’Diaye-Mbaye said. Ami Colé’s history The brand, which launched in 2021,
