On rediscovery, one prayer at a time
AfroYou started with a prom dress.
It was Afrocentric — African print, bold color — and it needed one more thing to feel finished. So I tied my own head wrap. The second I saw myself in the mirror, something shifted. I felt like a goddess. I've been chasing that feeling ever since: picking patterns, coordinating colors, making something out of fabric that makes a woman stand up straighter.
The first version of AfroYou launched around 2017, right before I left for Spelman College — still one of the biggest inspirations to black women I know. I had the wraps. I had a launch. What I didn't have was the vision, fully formed. It was a raw idea I hadn't taken before God yet. So life happened, Spelman happened, and the brand died off. It needed time to prune.
What never died off was where I come from. I'm the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of go-getter Bahamian women. My Grammy taught me to sew. My mother has never once doubted me. My grandmother, who passed in 2021, used to tell people how proud she was to be the grandmother of Mellitta Horton — and I carry that with me into every batch we hand-finish.
I don't really believe in work-life balance. I live an integrated life — teacher, business owner, and Christian, all in the same breath. Pastor Dvarus Johnson and Minister Tiffany Johnson have poured into me as I've grown, and it shows in how I build now: faith first, not squeezed in after everything else.
So this isn't a relaunch. It's a rediscovery — the same idea, the same girl, but this time fully surrendered. My prayer for AfroYou is simple: that it becomes a household name, a faith-based fashion empire, and something that breaks barriers and shows what God's creativity looks like when a woman finally says yes to it.
— Mellitta