Spike Lee’s Daughter, Satchel, Is Poised to Put a Stylish Twist on Her Father’s Legacy
When Spike Lee won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay on Sunday—shockingly, his first ever Oscar win, for BlacKkKlansman—he urged the audience to mobilize around the 2020 presidential election and “do the right thing,” evoking his classic film of the same name. It’s that keen moral compass that he also instilled in his daughter, Satchel Lee, who collaborated with her father and brother, Jackson, on a new short film for Coach, appropriately titled Words Matter. Starring brand ambassador and Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan, the short video, which Satchel cowrote with her dad, finds the actor in the desert discarding rocks with hateful words on them, a fitting visualization of Lee’s Oscars speech and a project meant to encourage people to “make the moral choice between love versus hate.”
Satchel graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts film program in 2017 (her thesis film was shot by photographer Tyler Mitchell), but has since shifted her focus to the queer fashion and art publication DRØME, which she runs with her business partner and creative codirector, Caroline D’Arcy Gorman. The two just put out their third print issue in October, featuring interviews with Moonlight star Ashton Sanders, musician Billie Eilish, and designer Christian Siriano. Satchel maintains the importance of creating queer spaces in media, and considering the small scale of production (the duo do most of the heavy lifting), they can shape their space to their liking. “It’s one of those things where it’s like, as a small business, every day we wake up and it’s like okay, cool, what are we going to do?” she said. This summer, for instance, they’re hoping to put out a proper art book in lieu of a regular issue.
To go along with the Words Matter short that debuted today, Jackson and Satchel also assembled a series of interviews centered around the same themes. “My brother and I directed a series of individual videos with different people working in different mediums, talking about why words matter in this society and why what you say makes a difference,” Satchel said when we spoke after Coach’s recent New York Fashion Week show, to which she wore a three-tone purple miniskirt and matching jacket that immediately conveyed her sharp-edged sense of style.
Satchel’s visual reference points can be traced back to her family members, whom she looks to for creative inspiration. She takes more practical advice from her father. In the face of imposter syndrome, he has told her to not care what people think, an ethos she applies both to her work and manner of dress. On a more tangible level, she finds herself frequently pilfering from her brother’s closet. “I take everybody’s clothing,” Satchel said of her tomboyish wardrobe. That said, she can just as easily pull off a lavender set (perhaps a nod to her father’s all-purple red carpet attire) with mules or thigh-high patent leather boots as she can the pair of worn-in $8 jeans that she claims to wear just about every day.
If there’s one unifying element to her style, it’s a desire to feel wholly comfortable with how she presents herself to the world. “I’m bisexual, but I think I read as straight,” she said. “So for me, my outfit doesn’t have to look like anything for anybody else, but when I look at myself, I need to feel like I know who I really am.” In other words, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
