**An excerpt from my Huffington Post article, “Sisterly Love: The Rise of the Black Girl Crush

Writer, David Foster Wallace, once wrote that the lives of others are a writer’s dinner; they are our sustenance. We observe, analog, and interrogate the sequential series of events, happenstances, and eccentricities of strangers and those closest to us, out of necessity — not to meddle. Life’s oddities are our fuel to work, to create; we are able to make connections and deductions that work to bridge varying histories, paths, and people together. But more importantly, we analyze the innards of “human situations” as a way to asses how individuals are perceived.

Without such fodder, we wind up speaking only of ourselves. Wallace absolved a tremendous amount of shame of mine with that principle and it has in turn helped me rectify my fascination with the lives of other women who happen to look just like me. Black women, more broadly — and Black women,artistically inclined and deftly dressed, more specifically.

For a style writer, whose work’s main focal point is the intersection of class, sex, race, and gender amongst the crowds gathered at Les Tuileries, it is uplifting to find tufts of a coiled Afro peeking out above the stylized fashion packs. Although I find that I can enjoy fashion and style on a very neutral level, as an individual who simply appreciates beauty, I preternaturally want to find out who that Afro belongs to. I want to learn how she has found herself amidst the glamour, and how she has navigated it all. This is the sustenance I was speaking of earlier.

In this, I have been taken with the lives and stories of several women, as of late: Solange Knowles, Shala Monroque, Julia Sarr-Jamois, Tracee Ellis Ross, Viola Davis, Kara Walker. All enchanting women who have summoned admirers through their varied talents in art, fashion editorial, music, acting, and entertainment — and yes, their alluring personal style. I’ve eagerly read up on their beginnings, successes, and philosophies in countless interviews, attended their lauded movies or art exhibitions, procured publications which they’ve covered or been featured amongst the pages of, and soaked up their energy and conspicuous intellect overheard in recorded interviews and even, memorable one-on-one conversations.

Though erring on the side of “ogling” (again, Wallace explains, a natural component of my job criteria as a writer), all this helps me piece the woman together, etch out a greater idea of this individual, and create a philosophical and sartorial alignment with one another in my mind. What blooms is not voyeurism, nor fandom, because I think that suggests an unequal balance of interest. But something much more subtle: a simple and honest-to-goodness “girl crush.”

**Click here to read the remainder of “Sisterly Love…”

**An excerpt from my VOGUE Italia piece, “Natural Hair Trend.”

As if by rite of passage, the Black model archive is filled with trials of hapharzard handling of one’s hair. Left in the hands of hairstylists deaf to the temperment of Black tresses, Black fashion pioneers have recounted tales of their coils and strands being stretched to their breaking, frayed ends; scalps carelessly permed, harshly scorched, battered with color, and left to be restored by weaves, wigs, and the shearing of frazzled locks.

These haunting experiences are now often shrouded in frustrated one-off tweets, or woeful interview admissions from present-day Black fashion favorites Jourdan Dunn and Chanel Iman, messages that acknowledge a problem, but rarely hold few responsible. This while Black model stalwarts Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks have fought the effects of alopecia publicly, Banks raising significant awareness to the damaging toll modeling has caused to her hair by going completely natural in 2010, even urging Larry King to feel her restored scalp in an on-camera 2009 interview.

 It is uplifting then to see the newest pack of Black models storming the catwalks in full embrace of their natural hairstyles, from cropped Afros, flat tops, to buzzed scalps–and in turn being embraced by the industry that has typically approached Black hair with skepticism and harsh critique.

**Click here to read the remainder of “Natural Hair Trend.”