Moya London
Moyang Yang is the 37-year-old founder of sustainable luxury handbag brand Moya London. In March 2023 she won the Design-A-Bag award at the APLF Awards in Dubai, for her acclaimed CARE handbag, which has been celebrated for its sustainable materials and designing process. As Moyang explains here, she only started pursuing fashion as a career a couple of years ago and hopes her story as an “immigrant mumpreneur” can help others…
Moyang is a relative newcomer to the fashion world. Born in Beijing, China, she arrived in the UK as a 17-year-old to study psychology at the University of York, which led to working a research psychologist for management consultants SHL Group. “As a Chinese immigrant in the UK, I had limited options in terms of careers that could allow me to stay in this country,” she says. “Fashion definitely wasn’t one of them. ”On the day Moyang received her British citizenship, she quit her job and started working as a tech entrepreneur, founding social networking fashion app Vernez. Despite this, she faced regular discrimination. “I was frequently told by investors that I ‘don’t look the part’,” she recalls.
Moyang went back to full-time work, with a job as customer researcher at fashion retailers Net-a-Porter. In 2021, she was on maternity leave, which she used to “test myself if I really have the talent to be a designer, learning bag-making in between my baby’s naps and even at 4am feeds… I was breastfeeding my baby with one hand, while drawing bags with the others.” The hard work paid off: just one year later Moyang’s first Moya London collection sold out during pre-orders, swiftly garnering important press coverage in the likes of British Vogue and the Independent. The self-professed ‘mumpreneur’ left her job shortly afterwards to focus on fashion full-time.
Sustainability is at the core of Moya London’s ethos. All bags are handcrafted by female artisans, with yarns and leathers sourced from reputable suppliers who are committed to low-impact leather production and are ICEC-certified. Moyang admits that it can take months to test Moya London bags, with some designs taking over 50 trials to get right. The brand proudly declares that “we design products that promote sustainability… as opposed to using sustainability to promote products. In each design, we carefully consider ways to make sustainability as a concept look cool and desirable.” It explains why Moya London collections are limited and often made-to-order, which also reduces waste. “It motivates our artisans, knowing each piece is loved and wanted,” says Moyang.
The star attraction in the Moya London range is the CARE handbag. The crochet tote bag is made with zero plastic, while its use of organic cotton yarn (rather than traditional cotton) means 9,000 litres of water is saved with the making of each bag. The CARE handbag was designed as an “ode to Black and Asian women who are driving fashion sustainability”, with Moyang telling the Alt A Review that people of colour accounted for over 70% of her first customersthat people of colour accounted for over 70% of her first customers. “People are the driving force of eco-fashion and I want to make them the centre of my designs,” she says.
In March 2023 the CARE handbag won the Design-A-Bag award at the APLF trade show in Dubai, beating 600 other designers from across the globe. Moyang flew out to Dubai to pick up the award, which she describes as a “confidence boost” (the award came only one year after she launched the brand) also giving Moya London a vital launchpad on the global stage. The luminaries of the leathers world were impressed by the bag. "The CARE Bag carries strong sustainability messages while telling beautiful stories of the women behind," said APLF judge Olivier Védrine, also co-founder of Paris-based design agency [o,o].
The CARE bag had its official launch in London in April. “I hope that in five years’ time, we will be known as a brand that modernises traditional crafts (or simply as the coolest crochet brand),” says Moyang. As a designer from a minority background who entered the fashion industry relatively late, Moyang is keen to inspire others with her journey. “I’m a mumpreneur, a woman of colour, an immigrant and a self-taught designer who went through a lot to get to where I am today,” she tells Meet the Leader. “I hope my story can help inspire other women too.”