Soul Woman

Boston designer Nirva Derbekyan, whose confident, flirty pieces have been available at Matsu for two years, describes Muramatsu as a talented buyer and a style mentor. “Dava is very in tune with design. She relies on her precise instincts when she buys—trying everything on and deciding how each garment makes her feel,” she says. “It’s very flattering when Dava chooses a piece because she is an incredibly visual person who has unusually distinct taste.”

Like most artists, Muramatsu doesn’t commit to a favorite designer; instead she likes to take “bits and pieces of everything and do it all in my own way. It’s gotta be processed through me. I’m like the sifter, going through designers’ things in order to come up with a unique menu, recipe, and components to make it so that it’s balanced for my own desire.”

And like most artists, Muramatsu has a sometimes visceral reaction to design. “At times, I’ll literally crave a color. It’s a physical thing. Last weekend I was all about the color grape. I went to Barneys, I went to Bloomingdales, I went everywhere. So when I couldn’t find anything, I ended up buying sheets and sheets of grape tissue paper and grape ribbon. And then I felt fulfilled.

“My life is all about glamour and earth, glamour and earth. It’s like wearing fine jewelry in the bathtub or wearing diamonds with denim. It’s like wearing a $1,100 bordeaux velvet coat to shovel snow in the woods, which I do! And it’s a little eccentric, too.”