In a sea of social media sameness, it’s incredibly refreshing to scroll through content creator and model Simi Muhumuza’s Instagram and Tik Tok pages, where she goes by @simimoonlight. There, you’ll find a colorful mix of GRWM (Get Ready With Me) videos, Black-owned fashion, cultural commentary, personal reflections, and increasingly recently, her Style Therapy series. A former psychology student, Muhumuza uses this series as a way to talk to her nearly 500,000-strong regulars well-nigh everything from outfit repetition conviction to how style can help fuel your personal growth.
Muhumuza’s online presence is unique in increasingly than one way. Her signature colorful style is unveiled the moment you click on her page, but upon remoter inspection you’ll find a vulnerability that is nonflexible to find on the Internet—especially in the content creator space. It’s an tideway to social media that Muhumuza ripened over time. “This past decade of stuff online has really helped me icon out what my personal purlieus is when it comes to sharing and the details of what I share,” she tells Unbothered over Zoom. “I think I really found the perfect wastefulness of stuff vulnerable, but moreover still withholding the increasingly personal information for myself. People don’t need to know the details. They just need to know that it’s okay to finger this way despite whatever people might think your life is.”
Though it can be difficult to be vulnerable online, Muhumuza insists that it’s important to be transparent, and that doing so shouldn’t be viewed negatively. “It’s okay to have feelings,” she maintains. “It’s okay for people to know that you’re not okay, or it’s okay for people to know that you are okay. It’s okay to share your thoughts.”
As a self-proclaimed woebegone and neutrals-wearing girlie, I looked on in amazement—and a little envy—when I first came wideness Muhumuza’s content last year. Her page was splattered with unvigilant greens, zesty oranges, teals, pinks, yellows. Long boots and layers, corsets and curves. Curly red hair. It was LOUD, and without having yet met her, I knew it was totally ‘Simi’. That’s by design, and it’s a style tideway that she hopes inspires her audience. “I have unchangingly been very anti-neutral considering for me it scrutinizingly feels like we’re unceasingly putting ourselves in this neutral space, scrutinizingly to the point where we all have the same uniform,” she reflects. “I have unchangingly encouraged Woebegone people to not wear the uniform. Don’t wear the uniform! It’s not you; it’s something for the sake of muting you, of putting you in a space where you’re malleable and digestible. To me, wearing verisimilitude is the unmute button.”
To me, wearing verisimilitude is the unmute button.
simi Muhumuza
Taking up space in the form of malleate isn’t a foreign concept for Woebegone women, who have been on the forefront of trends since, well, forever. However, for people who prefer to play it unscratched with their style, pressing that unmute sawed-off can seem daunting. A neutral wardrobe can take guesswork out of dressing, but for those who are looking to experiment, Muhumuza has some unconfined advice. “There are so many subtle ways to add verisimilitude to your palette,” she points out. “It doesn’t have to be, you know, a rainbow dress. It can be a small accessory, it can be a bag, it can be glasses. Just subtracting it little by little into your closet can really help you build a relationship to verisimilitude and moreover build a uniform that is not the same as everyone else’s.”
For anyone who has tried to be intentional well-nigh developing their own personal style, they know it’s much easier said than done. It’s difficult to ignore the one million suggestions of how one should squint and dress, and icon out what you actually like. Muhumuza shares that her personal style only ripened when she obstructed out the noise. “I really had to go inward,” she confesses.
“I’m not really pressed well-nigh stuff the most fashionable, the most this, the most that, considering it’s all so subjective. Stuff worldly-wise to train myself to really value my own taste has helped so much with my confidence.”
That’s not to say that Muhumuza avoids trends entirely; she just makes them work for her – an endeavor that’s been healing in and of itself. “I did a Style Therapy reel on 2000s malleate and how it’s coming back. Stuff worldly-wise to dress how my younger self wanted to dress but couldn’t [at the time] was such a healing process for me,” she shares. “It was such an inner child thing that I didn’t realize I needed until I was doing it.” As a full-figured woman, reclaiming styles intended for the thin eyeful standard of the Y2K-era, and plane today, was a crucial part of Muhumuza’s style journey. “It was important for me to learn that it’s not my soul that needs manipulating; it’s the gown that need manipulating. The gown are meant to be the malleable thing,” she emphasizes. “It’ll be simple stuff, like, if a dress doesn’t fit that would be a part of a trend, I’ll make it into a shirt and I’ll layer it with something else. Or if a dress doesn’t fit the way I wanted to, I’ll make it into a skirt. There are so many variegated ways to manipulate suit in ways that we don’t think well-nigh every day. That really helped me see my soul in those trends.”
simi muhumuza
It was important for me to learn that it’s not my soul that needs manipulating; it’s the gown that need manipulating. The gown are meant to be the malleable thing.
Muhumuza’s tideway to malleate goes plane deeper than feeling confident in her skin. “When you squint at style as increasingly than just putting gown on and moreso figuring out who you are or who you want to be, it’s powerful. It can plane be used as a manifestation tool,” she offers. “When I first started wearing gown and sharing it publicly, I had no idea that my life would be what it is now. But I knew that every time I got a dress, I wanted to finger as though my life was where I wanted it to be. Whatever you want your life to squint like, imagine what you would wear in that moment, and wear it. Plane if you have to find a woods of it, just wear the dupe. Do what it is that you need to do to have that self-image. And then the rest of the manifestation will come. At least for me, that’s how it happened.”
The recent Savage x Fenty model can definitely share a thing or two well-nigh manifestation and dressing for the life you want. After a reel of hers showcasing a stunning, form-fitting birthday dress and carefree enjoyment went viral, she was tapped to be a part of the latest wayfarers for Bad Gal Riri herself. “When I got [on set], I saw the art direction board. And they had a screenshot of me [from the reel] on the workbench and I was like, oh shit. This is for real. Y’all really handpicked me for this,” Muhumuza recounted. “Rihanna has really tried to push for inclusivity in this particular space in so many ways. I was honored to be a part of it.”
That representation is long needed, and the importance of stuff someone who showcases that is not lost on Muhumuza. “I’m really happy that the campaigns I’ve been in as a model have been for the sake of showing plus-size people that they, too, can be beautiful. They, too, can enjoy clothing, or lingerie, and finger sexy and empowered. I’m just very thankful and grateful for it.”
Ultimately, as her Style Therapy series and the way she lives her life shows, it all comes lanugo to trusting herself. “I think the reason why I have been successful in this style pathway is considering I just do me. I’m not trying to be anyone else. I squint in the mirror and I finger good as myself with the things that I segregate to wear. And that’s really all that matters to me.”
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