SUMAYYA VALLY, ‘ARCHITECT, AFRICAN, MUSLIM and WOMAN’, on the power of hybridity.

Photographer Lily Bertrand-Webb

TIME100 Next List honouree, youngest architect to design the Serpentine Pavilion, artistic director of the first Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, Sumayya Vally shares her thoughts on the only few things that matters: purpose, belief and art.

Celebrating hybrid identities appears to be the purpose of most of your work - if not all - as an architect, curator, artistic director, and principal of design research practice Counterspace. How has your individual path led to this vocation?

Ultimately, I think the very conditions and the cultures that we live in are hybrid. My own identity is so hyphenated, that it combines so much, just in who I am - African, Muslim, woman. And I think that is a strength and a power, because what hybridity does is, it allows us to resonate with many different contexts and allows us to empathize and see humanity in everyone else. There is also less of a risk of othering when we acknowledge and embrace our hybridity.

I was born and raised in an Apartheid-designated Indian-only township called Laudium, in South Africa. I was reared in a close-knit community, where faith-based practice and community initiatives played an important role in daily life, special events and activist activities.

I was born in February 1990, just four days after Nelson Mandela was released from prison; and I was four years old when the democracy we fought into being was born. 

I grew up in an incredible time of South Africa’s optimism, brought into a world in which Archbishop Tutu coined the Rainbow Nation and in the spirit of Ubuntu which translates to “I am because you are”. I was not quite of the ‘born-free’ generation; but very much raised on the cusp of it. 

I vividly remember parts of my childhood in inner-city Johannesburg, where my grandfather was a store-owner. In this world, I was surrounded by patterns and textiles–the Grammar, Punctuation and Rhythm of Agaseke, Bolga and Kente, tongues from Lesotho to India and Istanbul. On my daily walks to the Johannesburg City Library, I witnessed the surface, and glimpses of the workings inner-city–in the choreography of Fordsburg on a Friday before, during and after prayer time, the right time to buy fresh bread, whilst being made in stalls on a city sidewalk, the  systematic and instantaneous disassembly of these stalls at 6pm, and the performance of Johannesburg. Light on the streets and the skyline.

When I studied Architecture, I was shaped by the openness and generosity of my teachers, but also by the lack of what I saw in the curriculum in relation to the rich and complex experiences I had in the city. This mistrust for the historical record was shared by my generation–perhaps not architecture school (unfortunately), but certainly on the Campus and in the Country as a whole. My peers led the Rhodes Must Fall and subsequently the Fees Must Fall movements–which resonated with the world and seeded an array of calls for free, decolonised education. 

During my time as a student, I spent much of my time being in the city and working to learn from it. Johannesburg, with all the challenges of its deep and continued segregation, and all of its intensity, its hybrid and vernacular intelligences is my greatest teacher. 

I believe that there is architecture and creative expression and different modes of practising our disciplines embedded in our cultures - and I found so much inspiration in Johannesburg.
Now, I look at every  city and every condition we work in through that lens - there is always architecture waiting to happen in places that are overlooked. 

Looking at you and at your work I see at once the charisma of an iconoclast and the quiet power of a traditionalist, the rationalism of a Cartesian and the soul-warming altruism of a Believer. Do you actually live this dichotomy or is it a mirage?

To embody so many contrasting and contradictory worlds, ways and lenses is definitely something about me that crosses my mind from time to time. Though they may seem contradictory, I think they are in - fact - just a given factor of who I am, to a degree who we all are - hybrid - made up of many different ingredients. The English I speak is like this - accented and slanged with all sorts of influences - essentially its own thing. Jazz is like this. Architecture is like this too.
I believe therein is a power - that we make work that abstractly contains all these worlds means that we give others the opportunity to resonate with our work; we allow others in in a way that touches them on a profound and instinctive level - because we are appealing to some experience that is shared and then articulated in this hybridity.

A TIME100 Next List honouree, youngest architect to design the Serpentine Pavilion, artistic director of the first Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, I will not have enough space to pretend to an exhaustive list of your achievements. How does the word legacy resonate with you?

I think there is too much work to be done now - in the present - to be concerned with any notions of “success” - I am often frustrated with our generation’s focus and fascination with success rather than urgent attention to the work we need to do. Right now I feel that the work of expressing  hybrid identities into methods of practice is most urgent. These imaginations offer different visions and questions for our world - and without merely negating colonial worlds; they embody different worlds.

On the question of legacy, I believe that we are standing on the shoulders of so many - we are here because of the sacrifices that others made - Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Noguchi, Zaha Hadid, Balkrishna Doshi; and so many others. 

We need to see ourselves in that continuum, not here for our own success, but to honour our ancestors and the worlds of our children. 

“Societies flourish when old men plant trees; the shade of which they will never sit underneath.” 

Considering the urgency of the work, and how short life is, I feel like I have so much work to do. And for a long time, I was making this practice and it felt like speaking into a vacuum, and many people questioned the relevance of these ideas in the architectural realm and questioned their ability to translate into form or translate into anything. I'm incredibly honoured by the recent recognition, but I think it's important to acknowledge that when we have more visibility, it means that it gives others the confidence to be able to participate and engage in work from their own perspectives. I still feel this constant urgency for this work that still needs to be done. 

For example, my most recent competition win, the Asiat-Darse bridge in Vilvoorde, Belgium, was inspired by the Congolese activist and horticulturist Paul Panda Farnana. Though an important figure of the city and instrumental in its history, Farnana was not acknowledged for his immense impact - as an activist, Pan Africanist, an intellectual, an advocate for black slaves and an exceptional horticulturist. This important figure’s legacy was uncovered in my research of the city,  and I was left incredibly inspired by his story, which I’d never heard of. The project centres him and honours his life and his legacy, while also honouring the legacies of thousands of people who are unnamed and unknown.

For the form of the project, one of the research strands was water architectures from the Congo. During our research, we saw beautiful boat structures configured next to each other, which then became platforms for people to trade, gather, and share. The bridge takes the form of these boats and each of them are planted with species that come from Farnana’s research. Then, there are auxiliary boat structures that will embed themselves across areas of the riverbank, which will pollinate industrial areas across the landscape, as well as being a metaphor for healing. Each one will become a little garden of reflection and will be named in honor of the names that we found on the slave register.

There are so many untold stories, undreamt dreams, unmade worlds; waiting to be told.

A work of art for work of arts - as far as it gets from the White Cube and so-called 'Cultural Confinement" - you designed acclaimed art spaces. How do you envision the role of a gallery or a museum, as an architect?

I think the project of the museum as we know it is deeply in crisis and looking for relevance. In my role as Artistic Director of the Islamic Arts Biennale, I have brought my thinking as an architect to the project – in how I have thought through the theme, Awwal Bait – as a reflection on constructions of belonging; and in the conception of the narrative and subsequent spaces - as atmospheres and spaces for gathering. My practice is rooted in finding design form and artistic expression from our identities, which the Islamic Arts Biennale directly speaks to. Curation is pedagogical and research-driven and my practice has always been invested in that.

The works in the biennale are experiential – they put forth an entirely different definition for Islamic Art – rooted in the experiential, the oral, the aural, our ritual practices and the ingredients and infrastructures of gathering and community, in a way that doesn’t sit within the traditional sense of the gallery or museum. This project puts forward worlds that are resonant with our lives and come from different bodies of knowledge that can push forth the future of museums and creative practice differently. 

When we got the Serpentine brief and I looked at this commission – a very significant and visible commission on such a global platform – I felt that the lawn was waiting for a gesture. This is a platform to ask questions about architecture: What is a gallery and who is it for? How does it operate for different kinds of people? What is a truly public space? It was really essential for the project to take root in other places and to situate media, thinkers, work and programme from different realms into the same platform. This is a key part of the way I work, which is about trying to bring in the vibrancy and expression from other things to imbue architecture with some life and some magic.

Hannah Arendt defines the public space as a common field which "brings us together and yet prevents our falling over each other." What does community space mean in multicultural societies which used to deny the right to exist to other cultures / religion. How do we avoid a fragmented public space of communitarian bubbles? How do we build bridges between people?

I think platforms for sharing ideas, pavilions and biennale for example, are incredibly important in how they set the tone for the future and how they allow us to project our imaginations into those spaces. To understand that we have the opportunity to make the future of culture and cultural typologies through diverse voices and perspectives, which reference and resonate with such diverse geographies - is profound. I believe that platforms like this have a role to play in understanding the rich cultural and artistic heritages around us; and in nurturing and promoting understanding between communities. Our spaces are in dialogue with us; not only are we creating them; but they are creating us - we are born into architecture, and it reflects who we are to us, and it evolves our sense of who we are. What does that say of spaces that are not reflective of who we are?

Women in Charge: Bebold’s Favourite Founders Tell Us How They Got the Careers We Covet.

Girlboss, mumtrepreneur, ambitionista, sheEO… why does a woman in charge need a different title? At Bebold, we call a boss a boss. With female CEOs making up just 8% of the Fortune 500, regardless of what you call her, we will always celebrate a woman in charge.

Here, Mathilde Stone, founder of Bebold, chats to three of our favourite female founders. Fanny Moizant, whose innovative platform, Vestiaire Collective, paved the way for today’s luxury resale market and remains at the forefront of it, 13 years on. Cecile Roederer founded children’s fashion site, Smallable, a decade and a half ago and broke new ground with its sustainable focus. Today, the site has expanded into homewares and clothing for the whole family. Emilie Duchene worked with some of fashion’s most powerful players before launching Théa, a jewelry brand that creates customisable pieces highlighting the power of words. Her pieces have been worn by Beyonce Knowles and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Read on for insider advice from three women who have rewritten the template of how to run a successful business. This is how you make it whilst making a difference.

Fanny Moizant, Co-Founder of Vestiaire Collective  

MS: 13 years ago, when you started Vestiaire Collective, ‘circular economy’ wasn't the trendy catchphrase it is today. Would you take us through the genesis of Vestiaire Collective - how did the idea come to you and how did you start executing it?  

FM: Indeed, the circular economy wasn’t a trend. It existed as such - we all remember thrift shopping - but it wasn’t institutionalised and structured around digital players or centralised service providers. Before creating Vestiaire Collective, my co-founders and I (four men and one woman) analysed the fashion industry and noticed two structural trends in consumer behaviour. Firstly, people were buying more often under the influence of fast fashion, and second, they were moving away from an ownership paradigm and embracing a logic of access. 

On the one hand, consumerism was at its paroxysm - people were literally addicted to newness, never had a generation owned so much - and on the other hand, in other markets like food, we were observing a deep ecological awakening. We linked these findings and that’s how Vestiaire was born; offering a tasteful way to satisfy your shopping cravings without damaging the environment.  

“That’s how Vestiaire was born; offering a tasteful way to satisfy your shopping cravings without damaging the environment.”

In terms of how the idea came to me personally, I had received a tip from a business school professor: when you are looking for an idea you need to focus on your own dissatisfaction. If you are experiencing it, it means others will be too; there is a problem to solve and this is the potential start of a business. At the time, I was buying vintage pieces from Parisian bloggers, but the process was so outdated and painful that it led me to rethink the service and create what would become Vestiaire. 

“When you are looking for an idea you need to focus on your own dissatisfaction.”

MS: What is Vestiaire Collective, 13 years on?  

FM: A global business which is one of the things Sophie, my co-founder, and I - we lost the four men along the way - are most proud about. We have 700 Vestiaire Collective employees scattered all over the globe, from New York to Hong Kong. We were the first resell platform and unicorn company to be certified B-Corp, meaning that our commitment to sustainability and social responsibility has had a real impact.  

MS: You are a mother of two, what are your thoughts on motherhood and entrepreneurship?  

FM: Pursuing both is a choice. It is a decision I made and choosing means excluding. To be able to pursue both, you will have to sacrifice other areas of your life. It’s mostly a question of knowing yourself and understanding what matters to you.  

MS: How did you fund the project at its beginning? Vestiaire’s influence seems too far-reaching to dream of creating today so it would be empowering to hear about the rocky beginnings all startups experience.

FM: We invested our savings - we being six of us - which enabled us to go to market with a decent MVP. Using the MVP and three months of ‘proof of concept’, we managed to raise €600k and then, six months later, we went through our Series A. We were lucky enough to time it right - we really met our market.  

Something to note is that we invest in our growth by acquiring competitors (as we just did with the US market) but also by investing in our tech, meaning that we are still not profitable. I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but evaluate yourself towards the right KPIs. Profitability isn’t necessarily the goal when you are a disrupter or a pioneer. Our main KPIs were always transaction volume and inventory. Just something to think about!  

“Profitability isn’t necessarily the goal when you are a disrupter or a pioneer.”

MS: What do you wish you knew before starting Vestiaire and would like to share with us today as advice to aspiring female entrepreneurs? 

FM: Don’t overthink and trust your guts and passion. Don’t overthink - if I had a crystal bowl and could have seen the whole 13 years of the journey, I’m not not sure I would have done it. Trust your guts - if you feel it in your heart and guts, if you have this burning desire to create what you believe is the best solution for an existing problem, just ignore the fear and go! There is a quote by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg that I really love - ‘What would you do if you were not afraid?’ Ask yourself this question and go for whatever is the answer.

Cecile Roederer, Founder of Smallable

MS: Smallable will soon be celebrating its 15th anniversary. Before we hear more about the Smallable of tomorrow, would you take us back to the birth of the project, perhaps even to your life before Smallable? 

CR: I spent seven years working in a corporate environment knowing, probably since day one, that I had this ‘burning desire’ to create something of my own. 20 years ago, becoming an entrepreneur fresh out of university wasn’t a thing at all. You - well, I definitely did - felt that you needed time to learn your craft. After seven years, I decided that my craft was learnt and, whether correct or not, that I was ready to embrace an entrepreneurial venture. Here began the search for the right project - that elusive good idea. 

I looked at quite a wide range of markets. From the silver economy - as recommended by a lot of my most business-savvy friends - to the healthy-food market. Yet none of these potential market opportunities matched my own interests. I started to observe my new-mom friends, amongst them my four older sisters. These women loved fashion but had zero time to shop and struggled to find kids' fashion which mirrored their own styles. I had no kids myself, yet I was convinced that this was a missing brick in women’s, all parents’, lives. We started Smallable, a one-stop-online-shop for everything kids. 

MS: How would you define and qualify the Smallable family? What are the values you are trying to convey through Smallable?  

CR: I think the first and most important thing when I started Smallable was to abolish the hard border between kids’ and parents' worlds. I wanted to insufflate freedom, to offer items which refused to stay within the lines and which went beyond the traditional codes weighting on kids’ fashion. ‘You can’t dress kids in dark colours’, ‘children can’t wear grey, let alone black’, ‘it has to be blue for boys, pink for girls’. We have internalised all these codes and many generations didn’t or could not question them due to the state of the industry and the reality of the offer. 

MS: Sustainability is at the heart of Smallable and through the label you created Greenable, a curated selection of sustainable products on the Smallable site. How did the sustainability awakening emerge at Smallable? Minimising our impact on the environment our children will inherit, is this also inherent to the Smallable parental ethos?  

CR: Since the beginning, one of our core missions has been to create a sustainable business; a sustainable business for the planet and for the Smallable family.  

Sustainable for the planet through the brands we carry. From day one, we have tried to source green and organic brands and we introduced pioneering brands from all over, from Scandinavia to France. We also chose to never offer plastic or even paper carrying bags; all purchases come in a reusable, cotton tote bag. Today these moves are very obvious, but 15 years ago, it wasn’t the trend. 

Sustainability for the Smallable family: we have tried to bring together stakeholders – brands, suppliers, service providers – who share our conviction that a company isn’t only an economic player, with financial concerns, but also is an entity with a social responsibility.  

Three to four years ago we noticed a real ‘sustainability awakening’ from our customers, but also from parents and consumers in general. That’s when we started the label Greenable to support men and women in their transition to a greener way of life. The willingness to buy organic materials or more eco-responsible items can remain wishful thinking if we, as companies, don’t offer easy and actionable ways to transform this decision into acts. Greenable proved to be empowering for customers but also for brands themselves. As Greenable offered products more visibility on our platforms, many companies improved their processes to be able to benefit from the label.  

“The willingness to buy organic materials or more eco-responsible items can remain wishful thinking if we, as companies, don’t offer easy and actionable ways to transform this decision into acts.”

Lastly, I would add that sustainability for the Smallable family - in particular for our employees - has always meant running a durable business. Lots of e-com platforms launch, raise money and burn cash so quickly that they can’t survive more than a few years of existence. For me, it was important to follow an organic, sustainable growth with spendings in line with our revenue, a lean business which will last for the people who work every day to contribute to its success.  

MS: Sheryl Sandberg wrote in Lean-In that the most important decision a woman could take in her career was the choice of her partner. What would be your tip?  

CR: I couldn’t offer better advice as this is something I’ve applied to myself. My husband Pierre has always been extremely supportive of my professional ambitions. We launched Smallable together and then Pierre joined the company full-time after two years (and a baby), just when we felt we were starting to really prove the concept. Making sure your partner truly believes in equal opportunities between women and men and acts on this belief is a huge strength to a woman’s career. 

“I’m also trying to create an empowering work-space for our employees, offering flexible schedules so parents can see their kids before they go to bed and then work after dinner.”

I’m the CEO of Smallable and that has never been an issue for Pierre. At work, we each specialise in the areas where we have the highest added value and at home we function as a team - with an equal share of the hardship! I’m also trying to create an empowering work-space for our employees, offering flexible schedules so parents can see their kids before they go to bed and then work after dinner. We want to find the most suitable work flow for them.

Emilie Duchene, Founder of Théa Jewelry

MS: In a posthumous book from 1965, How to Do Things with Words, John Austin speaks about the performative power of words. You created your jewelry brand, Théa, around this power, enabling people to literally turn their words into gold. At a time when personalisation wasn’t everywhere, how did this idea come to you?

ED: Bespoke fine jewelry, of course, existed long before I launched Théa. The process was so formal, almost intimidating; you had to go to a fine jeweller, go through many back and forths and wait quite a long time until you got the piece. Théa was born from this experience. I was pregnant with my first daughter and I wanted a ring bearing her name. Facing all the pain-points of the bricks and mortar system, I thought there must be a better way to deliver this service. Even before I considered it as a business opportunity, everyone around me was complimenting me on my ‘Théa’ black diamond and rose gold ring. I worked in fashion for my whole career, at Isabel Marant, John Galiano and at Condé Nast and so I was surrounded by the right people to give feedback! 

Identifying a service that can be significantly improved and having a first ‘proof of concept’ validated by your target market, you don’t need much more to start a business. I definitely didn’t! I started Théa as a side hustle, an e-commerce website which was quite disruptive in fine jewelry at the time. After three years, I decided to give it one year full time and see if it would be viable as a company. It’s been seven years and I have never wanted to go back to a corporate position.

Lastly, to answer your question more specifically about the power of words - you could not be more on point! The love, emotions and meaning our customers put in the words they design into rings or necklaces is incredible. Each word carries a striking story, whether it is to celebrate a birth or the end of an illness - even a simple ‘love’ encapsulates the most powerful story when you listen to it.

“The love, emotions and meaning our customers put in the words they design into rings or necklaces is incredible. Each word carries a striking story, whether it is to celebrate a birth or the end of an illness - even a simple ‘love’ encapsulates the most powerful story when you listen to it.”

MS: Maternity impacted your career quite directly, with Théa, your daughter, giving birth to Théa the brand. What are your thoughts on motherhood and entrepreneurship? 

ED: Being a working mother has never been a question for me. What has always been my main concern is protecting my freedom. If you accept a typical work schedule and a non-stop working mind, strong leadership enables you to carry on both. Yes I do work all the time, consciously or unconsciously as an online business never closes, it’s 24/7. But I also have the flexibility to modulate my work frame. If I’ve been a good girl, and finished my job in advance, nothing prevents me from picking up my daughter from school at 4pm on a Monday! This is the freedom I protect for myself and for my team.

MS: How do you feed your creativity? 

ED: Everything can prompt my creativity, from a shop window to the hues of a yoghurt pot! There are literally no rules as to where I source my inspiration. I think it’s a brain pattern, one you can train yourself to use. Trying to make associations and see the world with a creative lens and observing what would look good together, from an outfit to a tableware set. You just need to make sure you maintain a creatively friendly environment. Don’t stay behind your desk every hour of every day - take your laptop out, get your brain and your eyes some fresh air! It proves to be more productive for your team and your company, equally.

MS: How do you think your team would qualify your leadership? 

ED: That’s a hard question to answer for yourself! I believe I have a lot of energy which, depending on the personality of the co-worker, can be a source to tap. I also happen to be a learning leader and this is an attitude I tend to nurture. My team is younger than me and I learn so much from them - social media skills but not just that (laugh). I believe that leadership is only positive if it drives people, if it encourages them to thrive with boldness and love. I also believe that the secret of good leadership is to listen to identify the areas of optimisation. 

“I believe that leadership is only positive if it drives people, if it encourages them to thrive with boldness and love.”

I also try to lead by example. I try to show that what I’ve accomplished is doable if you believe in yourself and reset your definition of success. Success isn’t necessarily a 1-billion sell out of your company, it’s not a £100,000k daily turn-over - though it can be if it resonates with you of course. To me, success is doing what sparks joy in your heart, what sets your soul on fire everyday! This is usually something that helps the women I mentor the most, it dials down the pressure, removes some of the fear of failing. If you measure success with happiness the quest is different and so are the means; your business ideas seem to be possible and there you suddenly are, taking the jump.

MS: What’s your definition of feminism? 

ED: I don’t believe in the gender war. I don’t think it’s fair on any of us. As believe gender is neutral to your essence, there is no reason to stigmatise a woman, to assume any capabilities or short falls based on her sex. I believe it operates both ways, for both genders. There are male allies who should not be excluded from the conversation about building a world of equal opportunities for all of us.

To venture a definition, I would say feminism is definitely believing in equal opportunities for both genders, but also celebrating the successes of every women, in every defintion, and make it shine so bright it will be a leading light for all of us - a spark igniting our inner boldness. 

We can’t wait to see what these women do next - keep up-to-date with Fanny, Cecile and Emilie’s journeys at @fannymoizant @cecileroederer @emilieduchene.