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Whose Black Don't Crack? O Magazine's Creative Director Raises Eyebrows—and Questions—With a Shirt
What a difference a week makes: Last Friday around this time, The Glow Up posted a story about a black man who’d conducted a clever (and sadly revealing) social experiment by wearing a T-shirt that riffed on the Washington Redskins logo by reworking it to say “Caucasians”—and a heated debate ensued. Some (like myself) thought…
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Time Traveling: For BlacKkKlansman, Costume Designer Marci Rodgers Took a Full Circle Journey
If you ask Marci Rodgers how she became a costume designer, her answer is simple: “God.” To the believers, it’s a perfectly credible answer, while the more spiritually skeptical might raise an eyebrow. But there is something undeniably divine in Rodger’s career trajectory, which began as a style-obsessed teenager in Evanston, Ill., just north of…
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'Sadly, It Did Not Make the Mark': André Leon Talley Critiques Paul Manafort's 'Wearable Art'
Real talk: When I grow up, I want to be the type of grande dame fashion editor who wears caftans while holding court on a chaise on some impossibly elegant veranda somewhere, tossing off witty observations and pithy quips. (Who am I kidding? I’m doing that right now—minus the veranda and chaise. Okay, so just…
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This Is How We Do It: Essence's September Issue—Starring Naomi!—Is a Study in Black Excellence
Leave it to Essence to remind us what black excellence looks like on both sides of the camera. Making their contribution to a season of intense black girl magic—where we are covering a full 50 percent of the 2018 fall fashion issues—the legendary black women’s magazine shows us exactly how excellent a product by a…
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'I Really Stepped Into Myself': Lena Waithe Says Cutting Her Hair Liberated Her from Gender Norms
Lena Waithe doesn’t owe anyone an explanation for who she is, how she loves or why she cut her famous locs last month; but the writer, actress and producer graciously gave one to Vanity Fair’s cameras while on the red carpet for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Grants Banquet on Thursday night. After joking that…
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We Have September Issues: Black Women Are Covering Magazines, But Who's Behind the Lens?
A funny thing happened while we were basking in the glow of cover after cover of fashion magazines featuring black faces this September: We came across an absolutely gorgeous cover of Issa Rae on Ebony’s Fall Fashion Issue. Stunning in a black tulle Vera Wang ballgown while striking a ballerina’s pose, Rae was the epitome…
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This Is Not a Drill: Love Meghan Markle's Club Monaco Dress? It's Being Restocked Friday Morning
Obsessed with Meghan Markle’s royal style, but don’t have a million-dollar clothing budget? Here’s your chance to play twinsies with the Duchess of Sussex (if you’re into that kind of thing)—without breaking the bank. After Markle wore the $328 “Shoanah” shirtdress to the wedding of Prince Harry’s pal Charlie Straubenzee last Saturday (which also happened…
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Grown-ish Is Cute, But Yara Shahidi Wants You to Get Politically Involved
Don’t ask Yara Shahidi to choose between being an ingenue and a serious intellectual; the 18-year-old is already one of several young black actresses breaking the mold when it comes to young Hollywood talent—not only for being non-messy, but for being socially conscious and civically-minded. In a cover story for the August 8 issue of…
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Aja Naomi King Gets Powerful for the Cover of Shape's September Issue
“All the things I’m involved in now are about women standing up for themselves,” How to Get Away with Murder’s Aja Naomi King tells Shape magazine as its September issue cover girl. Joining an unprecedented number of black women (and Kanye and kids) covering 2018’s fall fashion issues, King, also an ambassador for L’Oréal Paris,…
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Killer Curves: BET and La La Anthony Take an Intimate Look at an Obsession That's Killing Us
“What is beautiful? Who wrote the book on what the (bleep) beautiful is?” text They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but as black women, we know all too well the dichotomy between mainstream beauty norms and the ones upheld within our culture—many of which have been appropriated and regurgitated by the…
