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"  As the niece of Sierra Leone&amp;#039;s ex-president and the only daughter of the country&amp;#039;s former director of mines, in charge of minerals, diamonds, and gold, Zainab Sumu grew up exceedingly rich. Paris shopping trips, royal dinners, and round-the-clock chaperones were all part of the deal. And yet Zainab, as she likes to be called, has always felt like an outsider. During her private school years in London in the &amp;#039;80s, she was one of the only African students, doffing her oxfords and blazers for Doc Martens, Chanel jackets, and blond extensions. While at college, when her family was abruptly exiled following a military coup in 1992, a particular fuchsia Thierry Mugler jacket helped her through it. And later, when she moved to New York and found a job at Comme des Gar\u00E7ons, the statuesque Zainab relied on an Afro and her increasingly avant-garde style to hold her own among a tight-knit Japanese team. Fashion always got her through.  Now, after spending 30-some years wandering the globe and following a boyfriend to the West Coast, she&amp;#039;s finally alighted in Los Angeles. And all those experiments with Jean Paul Gaultier blazers, Yves Saint Laurent blouses, and Savile Row suits are finally being put to good use. Zainab has opened a boutique, one that bears her name.  &amp;quot;All the designers I carry have a story and a soul about them,&amp;quot; she says of labels such as Ohne Titel, Balmain, Azzedine Ala\u00EFa, and Tim Hamilton, which are known for their severe tailoring and conceptual silhouettes. &amp;quot;I call it primitive modern. When you first look at these pieces, they seem kind of scary. But then you start noticing the finesse and elegance, and the more you look, you begin to see refinement and the detail of the work.&amp;quot; Zainab&amp;#039;s aggressive aesthetic is an extension of her love for African primitivism, which she&amp;#039;s emphasized in the Melrose Avenue store&amp;#039;s tribal interior design. It&amp;#039;s also one that&amp;#039;s unique in a town still best known for velour sweatsuits and tube tops. &amp;quot;People pooh-pooh L.A. fashion because they see the nonsense that goes up and down the catwalk during L.A. Fashion Week and those girls running around in tracksuits,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But that&amp;#039;s not my client.&amp;quot;  Indeed, what makes Zainab so confident that there&amp;#039;s a market for her dramatic style is that for the past two years she&amp;#039;s operated an appointment-only shopping salon for some of California&amp;#039;s most private, moneyed, and fashionably forward elite: Danielle Steel, Anna Getty, Lucy Page (wife of Google founder Larry Page), Kathy Freston (wife of television honcho Tom Freston). &amp;quot;You won&amp;#039;t find these women at typical Hollywood openings, unless someone they know is involved in the project,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They support the arts, host charity events, travel the world. And they don&amp;#039;t mind paying extra for specialty items if it&amp;#039;s for something that&amp;#039;s going to really stand out.&amp;quot; When Getty first visited Zainab&amp;#039;s former apartment-cum-salon, she was instantly taken with the owner&amp;#039;s daring taste, not to mention that Manu Chao was playing on the stereo and her hostess was serving ros\u00E9. &amp;quot;It was really great to shop in this supercool loft in an old Hollywood building, and she always had pieces that you couldn&amp;#039;t find anywhere else in L.A., like Margiela and Ala\u00EFa, so you knew no one else would have them,&amp;quot; says Getty, likening the experience to visiting an atelier in Paris. &amp;quot;The clothes she chooses make you feel like you have your own unique look.&amp;quot;   Much of that effect has to do with Zainab&amp;#039;s belief in the transformative power of clothes. At the Capital College private school, and later Richmond American International University in London, where she studied premed (according to her father&amp;#039;s wishes), she often looked to fashion as a foil for race. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s different now, but when I was a little black girl in Paris, I would walk into a store and the salespeople were rude and dismissive,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Being able to pay for things was empowering. I remember buying a Chanel jacket and feeling so special, like wherever I walked, I stood out.&amp;quot; While her mother, a devout Muslim, stuck to traditional African lapas and head scarves worn with European designer shoes and handbags, the \u00ADburgeoning fashionista was allowed to make her own decisions and quickly learned the power of sartorial subversion: &amp;quot;My dad would come to London for business and want to take me to meet an ambassador, and I would have on these clunky boots that I&amp;#039;d wear nightclubbing at the Fridge in Brixton, so he&amp;#039;d leave me in the car!&amp;quot; After her fam\u00ADily&amp;#039;s exile, Zainab decided life was short and gave up studying premed to focus on fashion full-time. (Her father has since passed away, while her cousin is currently the president of Sierra Leone.)  By 1999, her family&amp;#039;s funds had almost entirely dried up, and Zainab had moved to New York, where she found a job waitressing at a West Village restaurant. Renting a room in a women&amp;#039;s-only hotel on the Upper West Side, she window-shopped Yohji Yamamoto but bought Urban Outfitters. &amp;quot;I looked at it as part of life and growing up\u2014it was what I could afford,&amp;quot; she says, looking on the bright side of what clearly was the low point for a woman who today wouldn&amp;#039;t leave the house in anything less than Azzedine Ala\u00EFa flats.  A year later, she talked her way, in French, into a sales manager position at Comme des Gar\u00E7ons. Over the next four years, she worked directly with legendary designers Rei Kawakubo and Junya Watanabe, handled major retail accounts such as Barneys New York and Saks Fifth Avenue (invaluable experience for her future store), and, most importantly, really began to appreciate what she calls the &amp;quot;ideology&amp;quot; behind fashion. &amp;quot;The thought process behind the development of a collection is what makes design so exciting,&amp;quot; she says, recalling a rosebud top with cutout holes from the spring/summer 2003 collection that still makes her swoon. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s why I don&amp;#039;t like cheap, disposable fashion. If you just need a summer dress to take on vacation, then fine, go to H&amp;amp;amp;M. But fashion should have a point of view behind it.&amp;quot;  Though she left Comme des Gar\u00E7ons to move to L.A. in 2004, the lessons she learned about strong identity at the conceptual label have stuck with her. Many of the young designers Zainab now carries at her boutique, including Ohne Titel, Jeremy Laing, and Tim Hamilton, have a postapocalyptic severity inspired by techno fabrications, welding uniforms, and the Wiener Werkst\u00E4tte. &amp;quot;The silhouettes are modern, but there&amp;#039;s a reference to the past in the technical details,&amp;quot; says Zainab, who next season hopes to add Swedish newcomer Sandra Backlund&amp;#039;s sculpted knits. For accessories, she&amp;#039;s focused on oversize Fenton cuffs and Natalia Brilli leather necklaces that have a strong tribal connection. The romantic warrior theme is even carried over into the interior design of the space, which is filled with African totems, beaded masks, and royal ceremonial furniture. &amp;quot;I want women to enter the store and be inspired by something different,&amp;quot; Zainab says. &amp;quot;And I want it to feel like an inviting place where you can come after a long day of running around and look at so many beautiful things. I want women to feel like they&amp;#039;re home.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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