Though I’m just beginning my journey with this publication, my love for fashion and personal style began much earlier in my life. Growing up surrounded by Denise Huxtable in syndication, Melanie B in her platforms, and my mother’s flamboyant east African dresses and prints, I was doomed for a love affair with threads of all sorts from the start. I believe in personal style as a powerful and lively art, and the means of self-expression with which I am most comfortable. After four-and-a-half long years in business school and a few other brief stints in independent publishing, I’ve relocated to Toronto and stumbled into the world of WORN. It’s a lucky thing when you’re fortunate enough to join an organization you believe in so wholeheartedly: It’s good to be a wornette.
Current inspirations
OkayAfrica
This glorious offshoot of the famed OkayPlayer highlights and celebrates pop and youth cultures originating from the African continent and its various diasporas. Fashion editor Poundo Gomis’s original content about style, design, and social narratives in African fashion blows me out of the water time after time and I essentially want to be her when I grow up.
Two Brown Girls Podcast
Two friends, writers, and women of colour join forces to bring fiery, intelligent, sometimes political, and always upbeat commentary on film, music, celebrity happenings, and just about anything else pop culture. And It. Is. So. Funny. Contributors Fariha Roisin and Zeba Blay laugh, scream, fangirl, and throw shade week after week and it’s marvelous every time. The podcast has a really dynamic Tumblr account to go along with it. Zeba Blay is a personal internet personality favourite and lists “rachetry, The Spice Girls, [and] bad late ’90s/millennial fashions” among things she loves. Game, set, match.
DazedDigital
British magazine Dazed & Confused is essentially what would happen if you threw all of the really indulgent parts of my personality into a vacuum and spit them out in publication form. Dazed is a new favourite publication (after WORN of course) and its digital edition tickles my fancy in a huge way.
The Black Constellation’s “Ode to Octavia: Part 12″
Art collective the Black Constellation put together a series of short films (part 12 has been released online) in tribute to black female science fiction writer Octavia Butler, and the result is the most magnetic thing I’ve seen in a while. I’m slowly making my way through some of Butler’s work currently and, as such, appreciating this work of art to a maximum. Plus I saw Shabazz Palaces play a gig a few months ago which was pretty prolific; the bass and the positive vibes shook everything in the venue with beautiful violence and everybody danced without reserve.