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    • <p>Designed by Aurora James of Brother Vellies, the shoes were inspired by her insecurites as a woman of color and her “own struggles and issues with hair and how our hair is seen and perceived.” (Photo: Courtesy of Marvel Studios Black Panther/Getty) </p>
    • <p>Lupita Nyong’o poses with the models from the Black Panther Welcome to Wakanda NYFW fashion presentation. (Photo: Courtesy of Marvel Studios Black Panther/Getty) </p>
    • <p>Model wears a besoke dress design by Tolu Aremu and Becca McCharren of Chromat at the Black Panther Welcome to Wakanda NYFW fashion presentation. (Photo: Courtesy of Marvel Studios Black Panther/Getty) </p>
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    Brother Vellies

    Designed by Aurora James of Brother Vellies, the shoes were inspired by her insecurites as a woman of color and her “own struggles and issues with hair and how our hair is seen and perceived.” (Photo: Courtesy of Marvel Studios Black Panther/Getty)

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    These hairy high heels have a surprising connection to 'Black Panther' and natural hair

    Julie Tong
    February 10, 2018

    On Monday night, stars from the highly-anticipated Black Panther  film, including Lupita Nyong’o and Michael B. Jordan, attended the film’s “Welcome to Wakanda” NYFW event.

    Marvel & Disney tapped Aurora James of Brother Vellies to create an exclusive capsule collection inspired by the film. Although all the pieces are beautiful, the inspiration behind the shoes made them truly made them stand out.

    “The shoes themselves actually went through a lot of iterations and ideas… [but] over the last 72 hours I reworked everything and focused on some of the narratives and insecurities that I’ve had…as a woman of color,” James tells Yahoo Lifestyle. The shoes depict the fashion designer’s “own struggles and issues with hair and how our hair is seen and perceived.” A struggle often had by women of color between choosing to showcase their beautiful natural hair or not.

    The designer references one particular pair of shoes, a pair of textured snakeskin boots where one foot features a curly exterior made of a fibrous material called sisal. The other foot features layers of stick straight sisal fibers— a material James often uses in her work and one she sources directly from Haiti and regions in Africa.

    Additionally, the fashion presentation included bespoke looks inspired by the films’ characters by Sophie Theallet, LaQuan Smith, Chromat, Cushnie et Ochs, Fear of God, Ikré Jones, and Tome. For Chromat, creative director, Becca McCharen had one of her designers, Tolu Ameru take the lead on the design. Ameru, who is Nigerian, drew upon her roots, her mother, and Chromat’s own ethos on female empowerment and inclusivity to inform the final product. It is the only plus size dress featured in the collection and is made of a special Ankara fabric. However, all of these custom looks spoke to themes of empowerment, individuality, and inclusivity and will be auctioned off to benefit Save the Children following the event.

    NYFW this season continues to be a platform designers use to voice their thoughts and opinions on current social, cultural, and political issues. In an era when #MeToo is an all-too-real reality, female empowerment and inclusivity on race, gender, and sexuality continue to be pertinent themes fashion designers will decide to address — or not — in their shows.

    Though, for the few that have so far, they are letting their designs “speak” for themselves. A departure from recent seasons where statement tees proliferated the runway, almost “screaming” as one Vanity Fair writer suggests. Designers are going back to basics. Using their clothes—from the colors, down to the silhouettes, cuts, and fabrics to inform their voice. Yes, you have to dig a little deeper to find the underlying hidden messages. But that’s the great part about fashion, it doesn’t have to be obvious. As for what we have discovered so far? Messages that speak to race, sexism, and sexual harassment—all issues that currently, and unfortunately, still plague our society

    At Milly‘s show, we found a vibrantly colored series of workwear to evening wear: tailored separates, cocktail dresses, knits and blouses in shades like crimson red, canary yellow, cobalt blue, emerald, and fuchsia. The show featured a diverse set of models, including a male model wearing a silver fringy top, metallic trousers, and shiny silver heeled booties. It was without question, a beautiful collection. But there’s more to it. The collection, titled “Chromatic,” was a representation of all of us.

    According to Michelle Smith, co-founder and creative director of Milly, we each represent a  unique color, a unique personality, but we are stronger together, like a “beautiful rainbow.” The collection was “a vibrant expression of love, inclusiveness and the desire for equality. Our individuality is our greatest strength, and beautiful things can happen when we all come together,” says Smith in a press statement. For this designer, her collection “spoke” to the greater need for equality in both race, sexuality, and gender.

    However, Hillary Taymour of underground label Collina Strada took a different approach. Taymour staged an imaginary wedding straying from the usual fashion model archetypes, and instead cast a wide net of young and old men and women— even a baby, to be part of an imaginary wedding, but not between two people, for oneself. The theme was “higher self.” As stated in the show notes, “You cannot start to love another until you love yourself, so why not marry your higher self?” The collection did include a wedding dress, per se, but incorporated cargo pants which might be an ode to the connection between the power of pantsuits and feminism.

    “Amidst the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement I felt it is necessary to stop with the anger and turn back to love. This collection focuses on how a human should feel safe to dress however she/he or they choose. From sexy to frumpy.”

    Are statement tees on the way out? Maybe. But as shown, that doesn’t mean you can’t use fashion to convey more than just clothes.

    Ahead, see all of the “hidden” messages found in key sartorial moments throughout fashion week.

    • Tom Ford debuts sexy men’s flesh-tone undies at NYFW: So Zoolander! 
    • Inclusive cast of models, including an amputee and a baby, kick off New York Fashion Week
    • Your 2018 wardrobe shopping guide, according to 5 fashion retail experts 

    Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.

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    Yo yo yo: The double standards Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t want us to know: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed to be a daughter of a “small businessman,” and a mother who “cleaned houses,” her father, Sergio Ocasio-Roman, was born in New York City and was a prominent architect, having founded the firm Kirschenbaum & Ocasio-Roman Architects, PC. According to its Manta listing, the company boasted an annual revenue of $500,000 per year. Sergio Ocasio-Roman died from lung cancer in 2008 Ocasio-Cortez attended public school in Yorktown, where homes sell for nearly $900,000, according to Trulia. In her official biography, however, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that she was born and raised in the Bronx, and completely omitted her time in the ritzy upstate suburb. Because so little was known about the candidate before her shocking defeat of the incumbent, Joe Crowley, it was easy for this to fly under the radar for most New Yorkers who were in her governing district. But now, a new, explosive report from the Daily Mail suggests that the candidate is actually lying about her working-class roots. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who posits herself as a “socialist” who fights for New York’s working class — and is especially favorable to the “Bernie Bro” demographic for that reason — actually grew up in Westchester County, which is a ritzy suburb of New York City. The outlet reports that Ocasio-Cortez’s father chose to move the family to the suburb in 1991 because of the “good school districts” in the area — school districts which didn’t exist in the Bronx. Her mother, meanwhile, confirmed the family’s move to Westchester County in her own interview with the New York Times, and said that it was her mother — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s grandmother — that cleaned houses in Puerto Rico, not her. In fact, Ocasio-Cortez won several science competitions in high school and was on the dean’s list at Boston University. After college, she founded a children’s book publishing company that sought to portray the Bronx in a positive light. That all is a far cry from the “hard-knock life” that Ocasio-Cortez claims to have had. And although Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not return the Daily Mail’s request for a comment about the matter, she’s still expected to be a shoo-in for the NY-14 House of Representatives seat, because it’s a historically liberal district in New York.

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