Step into Belange Mutunda’s home studio and you see mannequins and hangers displaying a wave of colorful fabrics and flowing women’s apparel. Sketches showcase her ideas, moving from a drawing on paper or the computer screen to final product.
The Ankeny resident finds inspiration for her clothing patterns from her native Democratic Republic of the Congo – poppies, hibiscus, magnolias and palms in larger-than-life displays. Vibrant colors bring the feel of a lush jungle and tropical locales.
At just 28, Mutunda has already designed three collections for Shein, the Singapore-based fast-fashion brand, and a fourth is coming out this spring. The new year also will bring a fashion show in Atlanta and a return to designing and making her one-off fashions such as a giant cloudlike dress she wore for her engagement this spring.
She’s also a Ph.D. student at Iowa State University, already sharing her knowledge with students in the fashion design and marketing program.
Those accomplishments and the promise for more make her one of the Des Moines Register’s 15 People to Watch in 2025 and position her as a possible next Halston from Iowa. Roy Halston Frowick grew up until age 14 in Des Moines before creating some of the world’s most celebrated couture, amassing a fortune and gaining international acclaim.
Belange Mutunda ‘was always 10 steps ahead’ in Iowa State classwork
As a 17-year-old in Likasi, Mutunda was set on becoming an engineer, and she studied math and physics to prepare for that career.
Her senior year of high school, she started using recycled materials to make handmade accessories such as handbags and wallets at home, selling them to her classmates and discovering her passion for fashion. Then she told her father she wanted to study fashion instead of engineering.
“I think it’s a gift that I had already, but I just hadn’t discovered it yet,” Mutunda said.
She went on a quest to find a school where she could study fashion, looking at China and the United States for programs, and ended up enrolling at Des Moines Area Community College in Ankeny, never setting foot in Iowa before she made the move. She was denied a visa to study fashion at DMACC because she spoke only French, but she spent three months learning English to secure her place at the campus.
“We saw the name ‘Des Moines.’ We thought it was French, because the ‘moines’ is monk in French,” Mutunda said. “Maybe we have people who speak French there, because French is our first language. So we just randomly chose it and started applying.”
She studied fashion design and merchandising at DMACC, graduating in 2018.
Mutunda was a very active student, said Ann Gadbury, a fashion design professor and the fashion merchandising and design department chair. Even after graduating, she has continued to reach out to ask about interns or mentoring students and serves on the program’s Career & Technical Advisory Board.
“She always stayed in touch with everything that she was doing, always reaching out to say, ‘How can I help?’” Gadbury said.
Her enthusiasm to help students made her “a natural fit for our advisory board because she had lots of different experiences, from the workforce to the educational side of things, as well as always being that person who wanted to step in that mentorship role,” Gadbury said.
When Mutunda wanted to learn more about designing with Adobe products, she brought a color app to class and taught Gadbury how to use it.
“She taught me something new. She was just curious,” Gadbury said. “It’s just kind of funny how she was always 10 steps ahead of us. She knew what she wanted to do and where she wanted to be.”
Belange Mutunda’s designs get early recognition on national TV
In 2018, a friend asked her to send a piece from her collection, and she sent a green dress featuring a 20-foot train, 100% handmade.
“It took me about 10 hours,” she said. “I just wanted to challenge myself.”
That dress appeared on the reality TV show “Project Runway.”
Higher education keeps calling Belange Mutunda
After DMAAC, she decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree and ended up heading the short jaunt up I-35 to Iowa State.
“I actually wanted to go to FIT (the Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York, but again, it was just super expensive, and I feel like I wasn’t done with the Midwest yet,” she said.
Mutunda went on to study fashion merchandising and creative and technical design for her undergraduate degree but changed direction when she decided she needed more knowledge in her fashion arsenal.
“I knew how to sew at that point. I knew draping and patternmaking, but I felt like I was still lacking the technical side of fashion,” she said. Mutunda made the switch to creative and technical design in spring of 2019.
By 2020, she was a teaching assistant as an undergrad, helping students learn how to make patterns, when the pandemic shut down the school.
That didn’t stop Mutunda.
“I started learning 3D design on my own in the summer, and then by fall, I mastered the program,” she said. After talking with her professor, she came on board to teach the third segment of the program on 3D design.
“That was a great opportunity that they gave me as an undergrad student,” she said.
Iowa State named her a university student marshal, representing the College of Human Sciences at the fall 2020 Iowa State University commencement ceremony, where she delivered a speech at the College of Human Sciences convocation.
“We really think the world of her, and she is so dynamic, so energetic,” said her department chair, Linda Niehm, who is Mutunda’s professor in the Ph.D. program and has seen her grow since her undergrad days at ISU. “She’s also overcome a lot of different obstacles. She is not a quitter. That girl is a winner.”
Mutunda left Iowa to pursue her master’s degree in fashion marketing at LIM College, a fashion school in New York City, in 2022 before returning to Iowa. She decided she wanted to teach and enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Iowa State University, focusing on fashion merchandising, e-commerce, entrepreneurship and consumer behavior.
An opportunity to design for fashion giant Shein
After she earned her master’s degree, Mutunda knew she needed an avenue for her fashions beyond her micro-business of handmade clothing, Belange Handmade.
“I thought about ways I could expand in my business, because I became a mom, and I had to pivot,” she said.
Niehm at Iowa State said scaling a business like Mutunda’s is difficult.
“That’s tough to do when you’re a company of one, essentially,” Niehm said.
Mutunda was looking through Upwork, the global marketplace that connects freelancers with clients, and learned about Shein X, a Shein incubator program.
At first she thought it might be a scam.
It wasn’t. Shein X launched in 2021 with the mission of removing barriers for emerging designers.
“It’s really, really expensive to produce your own clothes, to get your own fabric to market, and all the logistics of shipping,” said Shein spokeswoman Emily Workman. “We take care of all of that and allow the designers to kind of focus on their art and their designs, and also have access to the global market of customers.”
Since launching in 2021, Shein X has worked with 4,600 fashion designers around the world to create 41,000 pieces sold through Shein.
Once Mutunda spoke with the company, she realized she might have a new venue for her work.
“Right away, it was just a fit, everything from the designs to her personality,” Workman said.
Niehm at Iowa State agrees that Mutunda’s work with Shein X has proved a beneficial step.
“I think her coordination with them gave her the other supply chain members that she didn’t have in her small structure, so that has really allowed her that scalability that would have been really challenging for anyone.”
One key to the successful collaboration is that Shein X produces only 100 to 150 of her designs at a time, rolling out more according to customer demand.
“It’s not like a traditional retailer where you predict it ahead of time, and you have those items, then you’re done once they’re sold out,” Workman said. “The way we work with all of our clothes, if they’re selling, they can be on our site for years. If it’s an item that people love, we keep producing it.”
Mutunda drew her first sketches for Shein in two weeks and refined them with help from Shein in March 2023, and by September, her first four pieces came out on the website at Shein X Belange Handmade. Her jumpsuit that hugs the curves with retro bell sleeves and bottoms in bright colors became her No. 1 seller. Now, she has 20 pieces in her collection, with her newest coming out in January or February at https://us.shein.com/designer/10001294.
Shein helps her source the fabric, but she designs all the prints.
“It’s very bright, like colorful, bold colors, flowers,” Mutunda said.
Shein provides casting reports to determine what shoppers will be buying in the months ahead.
“I try to blend my African roots in my collection,” she said, pointing to a bright African print. “I had to kind of blend my culture and American culture.”
Mutunda’s designs reflect her personality, Niehm said.
“When I look at her designs, and I look at the colors and the motif and just the energy of the design, that speaks to Belange,” Niehm said.
Mutunda showed a satin dress that she calls a “transition between spring and summer,” with flowers blooming on the sleeves. “I wanted something that was between sophisticated but also simple. You can wear it at a dinner. You can wear it at the beach. You can wear it just like pretty much anywhere.”
Another dress with cutouts incorporates hibiscus on chiffon. She uses a lot of stretch materials so the jumpsuits and dresses hug the body. A constellation of interesting elements makes Mutunda’s designs and fabrics stand out: slits, ruffles, asymmetrical skirts, rosette details, body-hugging and others.
Mutunda’s 2025 spring collection for Shein includes fabric patterns featuring magnolias and lemons.
Returning to her Belange Handmade custom collections
Aside from designing her latest fashions for Shein, Mutunda plans to unveil her newest custom collection under her own Belange Handmade label. She created her last custom collection in 2021 after she experienced burnout from the work. One piece she made used African fabrics that her mother sent her from The Congo. It goes for $100 to $130 for six yards of fabric. Another incorporates a bold red fabric and ruffles, something Mutunda said takes hours to sew.
“I make all my garments stretchable. Anybody from small to extra-large can wear them,” she said of her custom pieces.
Mutunda’s moxie — a combination of creativity and business smarts coupled with quick learning — helped her get to this point in her career and primes her to reach new heights.
“She is absolutely very smart,” Niehm said. “You think of how we traditionally look at people as left brain, right brain. I think she’s the creative, but she can be very analytical too. That’s a great combination for someone that wants to be a successful fashion entrepreneur.”
Meet Belange Mutunda
AGE: 28
BACKGROUND: Born and raised in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Moved to the U.S. at 19 and has lived in Iowa, California, New York and Maryland. Currently lives in Ankeny.
EDUCATION: Mutunda received her high school diploma in mathematics and physics at Ustawi Institute in 2014. In 2018, she earned an associate degree in fashion design and merchandising and an associate of general studies at DMACC. In 2020, she received her bachelor of science in apparel merchandising and design, focusing on creative and technical design, from Iowa State University. In 2022, she completed her master’s of professional studies in fashion marketing from LIM College in New York. She is now on a three-year Ph.D. track at ISU with a major in apparel, merchandising and design. Her research interests are in fashion entrepreneurship, consumer behavior in e-commerce and social sustainability in the context of small businesses.
CAREER: Her career in fashion started in 2014 when she founded Belange Handmade. After moving to the U.S., she worked part time in retail at Banana Republic, Old Navy and Levi’s for about two years and continued building her brand. She’s now a full-time instructor at ISU, teaching two undergraduate fashion-related courses. She has operated Belange Handmade for 10 years as the founder, creative director and fashion designer.
FAMILY: Two-year-old son, Jared. Her parents and four siblings do not live in the U.S.
About the Des Moines Register’s 15 People to Watch in 2025
It’s a Des Moines Register tradition to close out each year and open the next by introducing readers to 15 People to Watch — individuals expected to make an impact on Iowa in the coming year.
Register journalists and readers make nominations, which editors winnow to 15. They include Iowans making a difference in nonprofit advocacy, the arts, law enforcement, farming and fashion design.
We hope you are as inspired by reading about them as we were in profiling them.
Susan Stapleton is the entertainment editor and dining reporter at The Des Moines Register. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or drop her a line at sstapleton@gannett.com.
