To save Cleon the embarassment, I won’t go into a long soliloquy about our budding romance. No, I believe the below images speak for themselves… However, I will say that he is so very much my partner and I so very much his muse. A great creativity has been spurred.
Photos courtesy of Paula Elena Abreu Pita
For me there is always a fine balance between negotiating my politics and my passions, always a moment when I realize that the world is literally burning and I can often be found chatting about fashion or style. I struggle with that reality on a daily basis, as the canonical ideas of beauty and consumerism do not easily subsist alongside subversive racial politics. But as is my way, I can see how they both inform one another. I can see how style and protest can prove to be active sites of resistance for marginalized subcultures, how our dress can mirror our beliefs in miraculous ways.
Photo courtesy of Cleon Grey
Always Isabel Marant…sometimes just “Isabel”… only “Izzy” if you’re in the know: these are all the self-authored monikers of affection that I have attached to the beloved Parisian designer since my humble beginnings as a Brooklyn shop girl. The days when I could barely afford rent, let alone the Weimar-inspired winter coat I bought on sale from the designer. I had to have this gorgeous wooly creature in my life and some four years later, the piece still works; it still stuns. Which is why I love anything Isabel: it’s perennially f*cking cool.
…or did he?
In my recent offering for Huffington Post I discuss the rapper’s missteps as a designer…and how he can regain his footing in seasons to come. Check it out here!
Katrantzou…Katrantzou…Katrantzou: say that 5 times fast and one of Mary’s digitized styles may just appear before you. And if not in your closet, at least on the frames of one of your favorite fashion(able) editors or style icons.
Whose to know the direction my writing career will take , but if it came to resemble anything like Paris Vogue’s EIC, Emmanuelle Alt’s, I could die a very happy woman. I remember first seeing an image of this Parisian stunner and thinking how glamorous she was in just a tee, Isabel Marant boots, baggy jeans, and a shrunken blazer. Her hair was dishelved in the most excellent of ways and I was mesmerized. Read More
