Bozoma Saint John made a conscious effort to only wear outfits by Black designers on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
“I’ve always been intentional about what I wear, so for the very first look, at Sutton [Stracke]’s Surrealist Ball, I was like, ‘Oh shoot, I got to show up — that’s got to be custom.’ The only person I trusted to do it the way I needed it to be done was Mimmy Yeboah, a designer in Ghana,” Boz, 48, told Vogue in a profile published Friday, March 21. “Mimmy has designed for me before, so she knows all my measurements and usually gets it right, but I was still like, ‘Girl, I can’t come out here with even half-an-inch off. ‘So she flew from Ghana, I flew from LA, and we did a fitting here in New York … From there, it just snowballed.”
Boz, a former marketing executive with stints at the likes of Netflix and Uber, joined the show during the currently airing season 14 of RHOBH. She is the second Black woman to hold a diamond after costar Garcelle Beauvais.
“I was just like, ‘You know what? I think every single look — it doesn’t matter if I’m at home cooking with my daughter or if I’m going to lunch or I’m going to the ball — it’s going to be head-to-toe Black,’” she recalled of her styling. “That’s going to be my contribution. That’s the statement I’m going to make.”
The Best Fashion From the 2024 BET Awards: What the Stars Wore
While Boz did have “a lot” of workable outfits in her closet ahead of time, she still needed to request additional looks from the fashion houses themselves considering the amount of filming days in her schedule.
“I got a rack and then pulled out everything in my closet that was by Black designers, and then pulled out all my jewelry by Black designers, too,” Boz told the outlet. “The challenge was that three weeks into filming I was like, ‘Damn, I’ve worn 40 outfits already. Where do I go now?’ So then I was calling designers that I knew to be like, ‘Girl, what you got? Can you send me something?’ Or I’d go to their websites and be like, ‘OK, I need to buy this.’”
Throughout the season, Boz has worn pieces from Beyoncé’s Ivy Park collection and custom designer standouts from brands including Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Gucci.
Kyle Richards’ Most Fabulous Fashion Moments Through the Years: See Her Style Evolution
“Dapper Dan made a set custom for me when he was partnering with Gucci, so that’s something I already owned,” she told Vogue. “I came up to Harlem and he helped me pick the fabric, and we picked the appliqués—the whole thing. I carry Chanel, but it’s a bag from Pharrell’s collab. And I wear Louis, but it’s got to be Virgil [Abloh].”
Boz also counts her Bravo cohorts — Kyle Richards, Erika Jayne, Dorit Kemsley, Sutton, 53, and Garcelle, 58 — as fashion inspiration.
“I love the fashion of the Beverly Hills girls,” she further gushed to the magazine. “When I was interested in joining, I binged all the seasons. Their personalities really show through what they wear. I knew exactly what they were bringing with what they were wearing. I feel like that is taboo to say in some circles, especially in the corporate space, but it’s not in this space.”
